The Hanging Stars - On A Golden Shore

Released: 08/03/24

The new album from cosmic country rockers The Hanging Stars. On a Golden Shore is the follow up to 2022's Hollow Heart and is the band's second album on Loose. Produced by Sean Read at Clashnarrow Studio. On A Golden Shore arrives as The Hanging Stars reflect on a year of triumphs. With an Americana Music Association Bob Harris - sanctioned award and a Nashville sell-out in Third Man's Blue Room with Jack White approvingly looking on, they're a leading light in the UK Cosmic Americana cohort. Their standing has allowed them to pay less attention to any preconceptions of what they are supposed to be'. On A Golden Shore - their fifth album and their second for the pioneering Loose Music, following 2022's Hollow Heart - finds them definitively themselves and presents a set of disparate songs whose fundamental linkage is the band that made them. On A Golden Shore 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. Much is first take because trying better, it never worked as well. 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.