Hollow heart

"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 Laurel Canyon vocals, picking up a sharper edge on Black Light Night, the shoegaze softness of the vocals set against the psychedelic guitar spikes ... Their past three albums have seen them teetering on greatness; this should rightly push them over the edge".