The Hanging Stars – On A Golden Shore: Album Review

By Seuras Og on 6th March 2024 • ( Leave a comment )

The Hanging Stars embrace the cosmos, leaving the country for much wider climes.

Release Date: 8th March 2024

Label: Loose

Format: CD / vinyl / digital

It’s official, then, Cosmic Americana is once more a thing, but now with capitals! Sure, these guys have been touting this as a concept for some time and over, now, five long-players, have been seeding the oh so Gram Parsons-esque vision into the vibe of the expanding renaissance of UK born country roots music. It now deserves and has earnt those capital letters, even if I’m not going to use the A*****ana word twice in one paragraph. Billed as the ‘darker little brother’ to 2022’s Hollow Heart, reviewed here, the band seem to have been on permanent road mode from the minute the doors of lock down opened, garnishing plaudits aplenty, with last summer’s show at Shrewsbury Folk especially galvanising.

Somehow, within that busy schedule, the band found the time to assemble at Edwin Collins’ Clashnarrow base, way, way up in Caithness, Scotland, and rip this one out, largely live in the studio. The aim? A self-confessed and self-styled “baggy Balearic country album”, an admirable idea, I am sure you would agree. To be fair, it was the four of singer and guitarist, Richard Olsen, drummer, Paulie Cobra, Patrick Ralla, guitars and keyboards, along with new bassist Paul Milne, that took the skeletal ideas and frameworks of songs up North. With melodic ideas and lyrical fragments mainly from Olsen, Ralla also a source, thrashing them first into joint musical shape was the aim, and it was well met.. Pedal steel maestro, Joe Harvey-Whyte, whose definition of busy is far more encompassing than most, then later added his own additional magic, at his own studio, in London.

Darker? Cosmic? Baggy? A murky strum introduces track one, intentionally all Exile On Main Street, but leavened with a hint of Sheryl Crow’s If It Makes You Happy, which it does, and that’s just in the first few seconds. It then opens up with some background swoops of steel, throbbing bass and percussion. This sets the mood, perfectly, for the album, as this track, Let Me Dream Of You, becomes jangle central. When Olsen starts singing, that sense is magnified by the harmony vocals and the ooh la la backing. A dark song set in lights, it is a song to draw in those who like a punchdrunk swagger about their listening. Beguilingly simple, the effect is anything but, it nailing your ears to the deck, hungry for more. Ralla’s guitar solo is wracked in a spiky, silky pain.

Sweet Light then brims over with bittersweetness, scattered liberally about an anthemic guitar motif. The band describe this as a Tom Petty song, sung by Robert Forster, which may even be apt, but I am hearing more the current sound of Teenage Fanclub, which is never a bad thing. The keyboards add a width to the sound and a pause for reflection in the middle section, and already, track two, there is the sense of a roll, especially as the main theme returns with more spiky guitar. It’s been commented previously on the Garcia-esque ripples that run through many Hanging Stars constructions, and this now comes to the fore, for Happiness Is A Bird, with a slightly acoustic Caribbean feel, margarita time, all of that . Harvey-Whyte gets his first full free rein to excel, flying all over the song like a candy chemtrail. Some exquisite bursts of echo give a delicious sense of foreboding to the song, a warning maybe to catch the lyrics, which aren’t quite as cheerful as the melody. “Longing is the greatest gift, waiting is the evil twin“. Indeed.

The mood shifts perceptibly to Disbelieving, actually the first song to embrace the overt country rock ambience the band have made their name with. A heat haze of melancholy hovers over this one, but it is a sad summer in the city evoked, rather than in the desert. And a realisation for me, OK not so much on this song, that steel is not an exclusive arbiter of country and Americana, and can be equally at home on this essentially English album. For however much the influences waft in from the West Coast, all these songs betray a lineage to the homegrown. For all your Deads, Loves and Spirits, there is as much debt here to 60’s psychedelic whimsy from this side the pond. This is then exemplified by Washing Line, a terrific song that carries distinct tropes of the Canterbury sound, or even early mid period Pink Floyd, with the organ underlining that mood. A piano line extends that link even further, as do Cobra’s clattery drums.

Golden Shore, I guess, might count as the title track, and is slow and sly bossanova, with a sinuous arrangement that allows all the instrumentation a say. Yes, that is panpipes at the start, from guest, Will Summers. I am liking Milne’s bass lines on this, dancing secretly with the steel and the electric, here both from Harvey-Whyte, with Ralla’s piano providing the propulsion. Now, suddenly, surprisingly, it is samba time, with Silver Rings sashaying in, arms akimbo and full of promise. Yet still, it is whiffs of the UK I am getting, as if were Michael Head to guest with the Hollies. It is both totally unexpected and entirely logical and I like it. In fact, it has become my favourite track.

I haven’t mentioned that much about Olsen’s smooth croon, the perfect gentle container for these songs of upbeat downlift. I Need A Good Day demonstrates this well, another jangle heavy song, where his lead vocal is embellished by the is it L.A. or Liverpool bvs. There is a wondrous progressively sitar effect on Ralla’s guitar that bubbles in only at the end of the chorus and imprints immediately. The more acoustic No Way Spell has rippling guitar and a rolling banjo, oddly an instrument I wouldn’t associate with the band, for all the c- and a-words used elesewhere. A mandolin solo, too, but, y’know, maybe courtesy the piano, it still sounds quintessentially English. Or British, I should say, maybe, in the way the UK bands, often from Scotland, can morph and mute the musics of America into sounding entirely local. I’ve mentioned one already, up above, and I would add Del Amitri to that list of unconscious influence.

Sticking with acoustic comes the positively Muswell Hillbilly-ness of Raindrops In A Hurricane. Almost a pub singalong, it is actually rather gentle and really rather lovely. A curious maritime pipe organ motif sneaks and gets deep in, under your skin, and won’t leave, no matter how you try to make it. Or make of it. It is finally with brass and a more sepulchral church organ, complete with cooing choral vocals, that invites in the confessional style of Heart In A Box, just as a bouncy bass takes us into near Beach Boys territory. So a healthy dollop of styles, Mariachi meet the Sally Army, which, when all get swirled around the palate, bring to mind the South London country lopes of the Rockingbirds. (Hardly a surprise there, given this albums production, and the brass arrangement, comes from Sean Read, of that band.) The song makes a terrific album and, probably, show closer, but my source material contains an additional 12th track, Don’t Be Long. This is a cracker, which is pure late period Cockney Rebel, with a touch of glam Mott The Hoople about it, too. Uncertain if it is an extra for other editions, but it would be a great single, were it 1974. Or even 1994. Hey ho.

Full marks to Loose Records and their continuing support for this engaging set of players. There is a real sense of transformation here. Whilst the first four albums are all solid and sound, and good examples of the emerging renaissance of, I’m going to say it, UK Americana, this is such a profound sideways step as to grasp all those stuck and stymied by the silos of genre. It grasps such lazy labels by the throat, and proclaims, with pride and without prejudice, that it doesn’t really matter any more. It’s all just music. Enjoy it!

Track number two, Sweet Light, is a good place to build up anticipation for the whole: