In the Meantime

The Glam Rock UFO That Crash-Landed in the ’90s

Jun 26, 2025

Spacehog: A Sonic Outlier in the Alt-Rock Sea

The mid-'90s were dominated by grunge's hangover; Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains were still echoing loud, but pop-punk (hello, Green Day) and Britpop (Oasis, Blur) were also coming in hot.

And then, there was Spacehog, a gang of British expats living in New York, wearing eyeliner and fuzzy coats, channeling glam rock when the rest of the world was still emotionally recovering from Nevermind.

It was so uncool that it was… actually kind of cool.

Let’s be clear, Spacehog weren’t doing nostalgia; they were reanimating glam rock with a cheeky alt-rock twist.

Think T. Rex riffage with Queen vocals and Radiohead-adjacent weirdness in the production.

Mid-'90s: A Brief History of the Weird

To appreciate Spacehog’s weirdness, let’s remember what 1995–1996 looked like in music:

Grunge was fading, but its sound still loomed over the radio.
Britpop was exploding across the Atlantic but hadn’t fully crossed over.
Hip-hop was surging, with Tupac and Biggie dominating headlines and airwaves.
Alternative rock was a grab bag: Alanis Morissette, Bush, The Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, and No Doubt.

And Spacehog, a band sounding like they got lost on the way to a Bowie tribute show and ended up opening for Beck.

They weren’t anti-establishment like Rage, and they weren’t sweethearts like Third Eye Blind. They were theatrical, eccentric, and British, leaning into a retro-futurism that most people didn’t know what to do with. The lineup?

Royston Langdon. Lead vocals, bass guitar, keyboards
Antony Langdon. Guitar, backing vocals
Jonny Cragg. Drums, percussion
Richard Steel. Lead guitar

Royston and Antony are brothers (yes, the glam runs in the family), and their chemistry gives the band part of its eccentric charm.

The whole group helped shape that thick, theatrical, glam-meets-alt-rock sound that made Resident Alien such a unique entry in the mid-’90s music scene.

One-Hit Wonder? Technically, yes. Emotionally, No.

So, let’s talk legacy.

Spacehogs’ In the Meantime is catchy as hell, theatrical, and layered. It doesn’t try to be grunge. It doesn’t apologize for sounding massive and weird. And that’s part of the magic.

That soaring intro? It's a sample from the Penguin Café Orchestra's Telephone and Rubber Band, already a weird and wonderful start.

And then Royston Langdon (our frontman and glam space prince) drops in with a warbly Bowie-meets-Bolanesque vocal over crunchy bass lines and riffy guitars.

In the Meantime is a textbook example of a one-hit wonder, charting at #1 on the US Modern Rock Tracks and climbing high on the Billboard Hot 100. And then… well, the band never got close to that again.

But man, what a hit to go out on.

It’s the kind of track that still pops up in movie trailers, video games (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 gave it a recent glow-up), and millennial nostalgia playlists.

It’s timeless in a weird way, because it never fit its time to begin with.

It’s not a song that defined a decade, but it definitely decorated it with glitter and space dust.

And the song structure? It’s almost hypnotic. That bass riff (played by Royston himself) is sticky, like bubble gum on your boot.

The chorus lifts you out of the fog, only to drop you back into the swirling, spaced-out verses.

Oh, and let’s not forget the lyric that gave the band its entire space-age vibe:

“And in the end we shall achieve in time the thing they call divine.”

Sure, it sounds vaguely philosophical, maybe even nonsense. But it feels important, grand, like something Bowie would mumble while painting stars on a dressing room mirror.

So, why In the Meantime Still Works

This is one of those rare songs that feels big without feeling forced.

It’s hooky but weird, loud but melodic, and self-aware without being ironic. And underneath the spacey layers and thick distortion is something surprisingly heartfelt.

There’s a yearning in those lyrics. A search for something more in the “meantime”—while we wait for love, meaning, maybe a spaceship to take us somewhere better.

Musically, it’s confident. Vocally, it’s bold. Lyrically, it’s cosmic nonsense that somehow lands. And in an era stuffed with angst and earnestness, Spacehog had the nerve to just… have fun.

The Geekatune Verdict: A Glam Bomb in a Flannel World

Spacehog’s In the Meantime is the kind of one-hit wonder we need more of.

It’s ambitious, weirdly comforting, and endlessly re-listenable. It didn’t follow the alt-rock rulebook, and maybe that’s why it didn’t last.

But it did matter.

If you’ve forgotten about this track, it’s time to throw it back in your rotation. Put it on full volume. Close your eyes.

Let that choir intro lift you into orbit, and for 4 minutes and 58 seconds, let yourself believe we’re all just floating through this space junkyard together… in style.