Following their recent appearance at Jack White’s Third Man Records in Nashville for the 2023 Americana Music Association Festival, London’s cosmic cowboys,The Hanging Stars are releasing thier fifth album. On a Golden Shore, the follow up to last year’s critically acclaimed Hollow Heart which bagged them the Bob Harris Emerging Artist Award at 2022’s Americana Music Association UK Awards. On A Golden Shore will be released 8th March 2024 on Loose Music.
Today, they release the third single entitled, “Sweet Light”, it’s a glorious onslaught of blissed-out electric guitars and wide-screen pedal steel. Sitting somewhere between a countrified Lou Reed and more contemporary acts like Kurt Vile and Allah-Las, this Ralla/Olson composition is a yearning anthem to a love once lost. The accompanying video is part-inspired by the British kitchen sink dramas of the 60s: picture a smoky nightclub situation, cigarettes tracing ladders, a band blowing Dixie – only filmed on a cold December morning at the bands’ HQ, The Betsey Trotwood pub in Clerkenwell, London.
On A Golden Shore finds The Hanging Star’s definitively themselves and presents a set of disparate songs whose fundamental linkage is the band that made them. The album was recorded at Edwyn Collins’ Clashnarrow Studios with Sean Read producing. Singer/guitarist Richard Olson, drummer Paulie Cobra, multi-instrumentalist Patrick Ralla, plus freshman bassist Paul Milne – laid down the album’s backbone over eight days. Mostly recorded live, even the solos done as a piece. Pedal-steel player Joe Harvey-Whyte created and added his parts at his London studio bringing ‘shimmery psychedelic goodness’.
Smartly sequenced, On a Golden Shore proceeds in clusters of songs; commencing with the free and easy choogle of ‘Let Me Dream Of You’, encompassing the sunny glam of ‘Sweet Light’, the baggy Balearic waft of ‘Happiness Is A Bird’, the pan pipes and bongos of the exotic ‘Golden Shore’, through to the rolling banjo of ‘No Way Spell’ and the celestial cascades of ‘Heart In A Box’.
Fashioned instinctively, On A Golden Shore is ultimately an album of sensation as much as thought, filled with fleeting moments of blissful excess, and stumbling, rushing flutters of sound; its evanescent psychedelia, divine choruses, and shards of strings combine into an infectious, compelling Cosmic Heartbreak Boogie.
Tour Dates below:
19th March – Norwich, Norwich Arts Centre
21st March – Manchester, The Yard
22nd March – Glasgow, The Glad Café
23rd March – Nottingham, The Angel
27th March – London, The Moth Club w/ Gerry Love
29th March – Southampton, Joiners
31st March – Bristol, Hen and Chicken
4th April – Hassocks, Mid Sussex Music Hall
11th April – Liverpool, St Michael in the Hamlet Church
12th Aprl – Isle of Wight, Strings Bar & Venue
19th April – Staffordshire, The Foxlowe Arts Centre
29th May – Leeds, Hyde Park Book Club
30th May – Chelmsford, Hot Box
15th June – Very Good Trip Festival, Chateau de Bellocq , France
Thoughts Words Action 