The Hanging Stars Release New Single “Sweet Light”

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