This former psych-folk singer has ditched the latter half of that appellation and boosted the former: The Silver Globe owes an audible debt to the space-rock of Hawkwind in its first half, even sampling that band’s Star Cannibal for the central theme of The Electric Mountain. But The Silver Globe doesn’t actually sound much like Hawkwind, largely because of Weaver’s voice: one of those cut-glass, unfailingly true English voices, completely untouched by even the slightest tinge of R&B, that have the ability to make a song sound like the soundtrack to a chilly drawing room. Cells, in fact, sounds more like a B-side from Saint Etienne – never a band obviously troubled by the desire to remake In Search of Space – than anything Dave Brock ever came near. Weaver’s voice is the key to the album: she can’t help but add melody, even when what lies beneath is the drone.
