Trance-generational summer music bridging the Gate with the Stars.

Release Date: 11th July 2025

Label: Loose

Format: CD / vinyl / digital

san fran memories, (or was it eastbourne?)

Remember those heady days of ’67, congregating together in Golden Gate Park, ahead impromptu performances by the Dead and Jefferson Airplane? No, me neither, I was at boarding school in Eastbourne, and had probably not yet begun to turn my pre-pubescent attention to the Summer of Love. But, fast forward, 4 or 5 years, and, via the inkies, NME and Melody Maker, I was beginning to soak up the west coast vibes, irresistably drawn to anything that might possibly suggest a counter-culture, and one so separate to my own. So, I would stand in the record shop, headphones on, near daily, ploughing through the cornucopia there available, my requests for It’s A Beautiful Day, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Stoneground being met by the ever tolerant staff of CASS Music.

Why this preamble? Because this is so very much the mood and mantras evoked by this extraordinary and unlikely collaboration. The Hanging Stars we know well, of course, a reliable production line of cosmic country, whom we have been following for some time, with 5 albums already under their South London belts. Here’s what we thought of their last one.

‘a folk singer’

Bonnie Dobson is rather less a name remembered, and probably dimly at that, at least on this side of the pond. A Canadian, she is described most frequently, if unimaginatively, as a folk singer, in the US meaning of such a term. In the 60’s she was a someone, writing and performing, and possibly best known for writing Morning Dew, a much covered song and a staple of the coffee house scene throughout North America. Retiring in the 1980’s, it took Jarvis Cocker to bring her back onto the stage, in 2007, for his curatorship of the annual Meltdown series. New material followed later, in 2014. Chancing upon the Hanging Stars, much more recently, in London, she sensed she had found just the band to help her realise the new material she had been writing. Any age difference; she is in her 80s, soon dropped away.

Pitch perfect sonics

Yes, this is new, or mostly, not the often safer ground of covers and revision that such collaborations usually aim for. Six of the eight songs are brand new Dobson writes, with one older song reprised and one from old mucker, Dino Valente, aka Chet Powers, of Quicksilver Messenger Service. And the quality is immediately bolted on as Baby’s Got The Blues billows out on a wave of tie-dye psychedelia, Her voice sounds and seems a fraction, at least a quarter, of her chronological, and the sonics are pitch perfect. Richard Olson has a crack team of cosmagicians alongside him in Hanging Stars, and here he is content to play right hand man to Dobson’s far from fading glory.

The line-up has been fairly steady over the last brace of albums, although steel maestro, Joe Harvey-Whyte, has now slipped off to pursue his own singular muse. (With Bobby Lee, for Last Ride, should you need to know.) Olson and trusty lieutenant, Patrick Ralla, handle fuzzy phased guitars, with Paul Milne and Paulie Cobra holding down the tentpoles on bass and drums respectively. Such is the shimmer on the guitar, you’d swear there an organ quietly chording, but the credits suggest otherwise.

magnificent touches

Trouble is more a runnin’ down the road, flatbed Ford sort of song, the guitar now a finger picking flurry. Whatever the credits say, if that’s not organ in the background, I’m Grace Slick, which, seeing as you wonder, is exactly the reference for Dobson’s now more urgent vocal, as the arrangement gets ever more carousel. Don’t Look Down is doomier, with whammy bar accentuation of the threatening slow strum. As the drums set up a stride, some mariachi horns chemtrail out across the sky. A magnificent touch, these come from co-producer, Sean Read, with Olson, with the erstwhile Rockingbird maintaining his knob-twiddling duties, as he has the last run of Hanging Stars records. ( I also note Itamar Rubinger plays drums for these last two songs, uncertain if instead or as well as Cobra.)

A Languid lysergic dream

Buoyed by the momentum of that, Dobson now unveils a power ballad, On A Morning Like this, a languid lysergic dream, with Olson adding some rich complementary bvs. That has to be a mellotron supplying lush fauchestration, and, if it isn’t, it surely should be. This is a song that shouts lava lamp, especially as, I suspect, Ralla, unfolds a a warm and leisurely peal of notes from his guitar. More brass, this time of an elegiac silver band cadence, features large for You Don’t Know, with perhaps also some real strings, gilding further the lily. And real they are, they and the horns arranged by a Herman Ringer. This really is the sound of another age, but with production values unrealised half a century, and counting, ago. Is this my favourite, as the french horns flaunt their splendour? Could well be.

Get Together is the Youngbloods’ hit single of 1969, bagging Valente/Powers more royalties than his own version. This side of the pond, the Dave Clark Five also gave it a good kicking. Archetypal hippy dippy lyrics betray the time and the place, as does the extended sitar like guitar coda, but (man), it just sounds and seems just about right to me, and what we need to be hearing and saying. The title track is somewhat autobiographical; it opens with “Last night I dreamt of Canada“, which, at least, sounds far less of a nightmare than were it the country below. This one is just a little to sentimental for me, but it is her story and it’s her album. Olson says his job was to provide grit for the oyster, and this is the one moment where a little more would not have gone amiss.

It was so much older then, it’s younger than that now

The set closes with some old, Stay With Me Tonight. This featured on her 2010 “comeback” album, Looking Back, if written much before, the album largely a set of songs recorded but never released, re-recorded and brought up to date. This, courtesy the twang, smacks, not for the first time, of early to mid Byrds, You Ain’t Going Nowhere, this time, as opposed to the 5D/8 Miles high of Get Together. This sounds the oldest song here by a country mile, the arrangement full of spot the references, with never more Augie Meyers organ adding extra lustre.

Enchanting is actually the word that best fits this record. Not necessarily as Hanging Stars as I may have hoped, but I never, either, expected this much for Bonnie. True, at times that pitch perfection strays out of modern climes and affectations, but there is a simple reposte: tune in, turn on and drop that needle carefully.

Baby’s Got The Blues in soft focus:

Bonnie Dobson online: Website / Facebook

Hanging Stars online: Website / Facebook / x / Instagram

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