The Hanging Stars – Hollow Heart
Loose Music – 25 March 2022
Wearing their cosmic country and late 60s West Coast folk-rock influences on their sleeve, embroidered with seams of Crosby Stills and Nash and The Byrds, recorded at Edwyn Collins’ Helmdale studios in Scotland, The Hanging Star’s fourth album Hollow Heart is their best yet.
It opens with the five-minute Ava, the hum of strings and a simple echoing guitar line giving way to the arrival of muted drums, a tumbling, airy guitar melody and Richard Olson’s dreamy Lauren Canyon vocals, picking up a sharper edge on Black Light Night, the shoegaze softness of the vocals set against the psychedelic guitar spikes. Conjuring memories of classic Bread filtered through a Graham Nash lens, Weep & Whisper ride clouds of pedal steel and piano, drummer Paula Colbie adding harmonies to a song about how getting older creeps up on you.
A make-out song with a 60s pop beat, Joe Harvey-Whyte’s pedal steel and Olson’s slurred vocals, Radio On was the sublime first single, built for airplay on a summer’s day, leading into the carpe diem (“drink up your wine before the glass runs dry”) theme of Ballad Of Whatever May Be where I was put in mind of cult UK 60s psych-folk outfit Kaleidoscope as much as The Stone Roses. Though Olson cites Richard Thompson and Fairport, it’s more The Byrds influences that can be heard on the semi title track, Hollow Eyes, Hollow Heart, a song about the consequences of taking refuge in the wrong quarters or with the wrong substances, recalling McGuinn and co somewhere between Everyone’s Been Burned and Pale Blue.
You’re So Free is their out and out nod to West Coast psych-pop decorated with Ethiopian jazz piano, a track Olson’s referred to as their take on The Turtles’ You Showed Me in a response to social media and its promulgating of differing viewpoints (“Scroll your feed. You’re so free to believe in what you see…”). Then, featuring spoken snippets (“flowers grow by gravestones”) by Collins a la The Velvets The Gift and written by bassist Sam Ferman, Rainbows On Windows is a lovely, gentle rolling fingerpicked acoustic guitar and shimmering electric wash of shoegaze ending in a swirl of electronics. Then the penultimate I Don’t Want To Feel To So Bad Anymore arrives in full on 12-string Byrds Eight Miles High jangle flowing through baroque and roll and spacey fairground organ effects as, taking a political angle, Olson takes a swipe at the Tory government (“Do take heed of your greed, as you choke on an appleseed” and sings about feeling good because you’re giving up trying. It ends with the lo-fi swaying woozy folk of Red Autumn Leaf, a sort of Americana Spiritualized about being cast aside with an extended outro that, like the album openers, fades in and out, circling around to the final note. Their past three albums have seen them teetering on greatness; this should rightly push them over the edge.
UK Tour Dates:
April 8th – Moth Club, London
April 24th – High Wycombe, Ramblin Roots
April 30th / May 1st – Kilkenny (RI) Kilkenny Roots Festival
May 5th – Manchester, Gullivers
May 6th – Colchester, Three Wise Monkeys
May 13th – Newport, Le Pub
May 27th – Liverpool, St Michael in the Hamlet Church
June 5th – Portsmouth, The Wedgwood Rooms
July 2nd – Easton, Maverick Festival
Website: https://thehangingstars.com/