Please note Alter States Promotions will only be hosting TWO more shows in 2024 before we take an extended break.  Do not miss both of these stellar shows. The Hanging Stars and the Annie Keating Band will both be amazing gigs. 

The Hanging Stars

Masters of a captivating meld of blissful psychedelic folk and harmony-laden cosmic country.

The Hanging Stars release their new album A Golden Shore as they 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 choogleof ‘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 Shoreis 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