Hiss Golden Messenger
Haw (Paradise Of Bachelors)
If anyone ever asks me what time and place in musical history I would I go back to the answer is always the same – Laurel Canyon, LA, in the early 70s. I can imagine sitting on a porch strumming a guitar and singing harmonies with Crosby, Stills and Nash, Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell and we’d all be best friends. Listening to the new album by Hiss Golden Messenger, I was transported there from my bedroom in Jarrow.
The band, actually from North Carolina, are now a few albums into a career which is still under the radar. Their songs are a kind of soulful country, with Mainman MC Taylor’s vocals, a Southern drawl if ever there was one, perfect for the music. Opener Red Rose Nantahala sets the bar high and the standard doesn’t drop. My kind of album, if you couldn’t tell already.
