Albums of The Year # 62 The Hanging Stars - A New Kind of Sky

 I was diue to see this lot play in March in a small pub in Gosforth, Newcastle. Then Lockdown happened.

From the opening bars of their latest album A New Kind of Sky.It's fairly clear exactly where The Hanging Stars are coming from. They inhabit utterly the territory called Cosmic Country, in this case the patch once occupied by Gram Parsons and the countrified Byrds and first brought forth on albums like The Notorious Byrd Brothers and Gilded Palace of Sin.

Theirs is a gorgeous, swirling awestruck sound. The band, and they're from London not California or Texas, are fine musicians one and all and they understand exactly how to hold back as required and let the music flow from them with a measured, unhurried step. This is a record made by people who know all too well what they want to do and how to go about doing it.

Being in awe of a particular kind of music and setting out to recreate what makes it so special is not always the easiest trick to pull off. Bands as good as Ride and The Rockingbirds have in the past have fallen into the trap of being too reverent to similar source material and failing to bottle the magic they sought to capture.

The Hanging Stars do very well in this respect on A New Kind of Sky. Purely and simply because the songs on here are very good ones and they're not merely trying to catch a lift on a time machine taking us back to '68 or '69. This is a record that sounds just fine in the here and now and manages to be more than pastiche or period piece despite its unashamed influences.

The songs sound just fine and dandy and with a couple of exceptions towards the end of the record cast a spell and hold it. No real surprise that there's nothing here good enough to grace the albums mentioned above but there's certainly much to enjoy and possibly send you back to the originals to discover just how great they were once more. On Three Rolling Hills they conjour up the mariachi spirit of prime time Love, on (I've Seen) The Summer in Her Eyes they remind the listener of just how special The Byrds were at their peak.

Track after track flows with convinced momentum. The band have an ace in their hands in the shape of steel fiddle player Joe Harvey-Whyte and his deft touches inspire moments where the band seem to defy gravity and allow their songs to float in the ether.

The Hanging Stars are a fine band and this is a class record. It seems that they're destined to remain a cult concern as this kind of music is something of a niche concern these days. They're playing in a pub just down the road from me a week on Saturday and I'll do my best to be there because judging by this they'd really be something special in a small room. In the meantime, this will more than do.