Police Dog Hogan’s adroit bluegrass/country-pop has made them unlikely cult favourites. The band’s ferociously loyal live following has seen them sell-out the O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, support the great Brian Wilson, and perform at Glastonbury, while their song‘Devon Brigade’ was nominated for Best Original Song at the UK Americana Awards. While their catalogue is rich with songs informed by themes ranging from the esoteric to the emotional, they may just have made their masterpiece with their new album ‘The Light At The Top Of The Stairs’. The record will be released on April 10th, and features their brand new single ‘Passing Through’. Listen HERE.
‘The Light At The Top Of The Stairs’ is a record of emotional articulacy and resonance. It’s a profound meditation on the passing of time, delivered by artists fiercely, viscerally aware that they find themselves in the autumn of their years. As vocalist/guitarist James Studholme sings in his careworn, cracked drawl of a vocal on the opener ‘How Did It Get To Be So Late?’, “I’m older than my father ever got to be. Now it’s me, planting trees I know I’ll never see.”
James says, “’The Light’ is the record I’ve always hoped we would on day make. We’ve tried put into the songs all the multi variegated wisdom, joy, disappointment, defiance, grief and stoicism that the rollercoaster of our life experience has granted us. It’s the most emotionally powerful LP we’ve made and we couldn’t be prouder of it ”
While Police Dog Hogan’s brand of Americana tends to unfold on the rain-swept greyscale of the A303 rather than the wide-open space ofRoute 66, the new single ‘Passing Through’ is a notable exception. It follows a detached Wim Wenders-style protagonist as he glides through the American heartland, present yet somehow detached.
As James notes, “It’s quite cinematic, one of those songs that opens with a single image: a motel pool on the edge of a highway. But it’s really about isolation, about being an observer, forever stuck on the other side of the glass.”
The album’s examination of mortality hits hardest on ‘One Last Trip Around the Song’. It’s a song about a dreaded yet inescapable mid-life rite of passage: bidding farewell to loved ones at the end of their days. Its hushed reverie will resonate deeply with anybody who’s ever sat next to a hospice bedside. Yet for its evident heartache, rather than sink into maudlin despair, it locates hope in the shadow of death.
Other songs aren’t so emotionally wracked. The rousing, skittering ‘Run Towards the Fire’ reflects that life asks you, now and then, to hot-foot it towards trouble, whether you want to or not, while ‘Flight 5A’ could be a Glen Campbell creation as a restless wanderer, unlucky in love, finds himself heading back home “with half of nothing.” The narrative, piano-driven ‘Sister Louise’ is a mesmeric exercise in Tom Waits-style pop voodoo, yet the record saves its killer punch for the end. The potent hauntology of ‘The Truth About Ghosts’ opens with a gentle, scarcely-there strum, over which James Studholme murmurs, “I have ghosts, not all of them dead…”
‘The Light At The Top of the Stairs’ will be released on digital, vinyl and CD formats.
Police Dog Hogan are James Studholme (guitar, vocals), Eddie Bishop (fiddle, mandolin), Tim Dowling (banjo, steel guitar), Emily Norris (trumpet), Shahen Galichian (accordion, piano), Don Bowen (bass) and Alistair Hamer (drums).
The band have three shows left on the calendar this year: at Canterbury’s Gulbenkian Theatre (tomorrow) ahead of two sold-out shows at the Half Moon, Putney (December 9th and 10th). They will then take the raw, brittle, sagacious songs that feature on ‘The Light At The Top of the Stairs’ on tour in 2026. Tickets for the shows, listed below, are available HERE.
APRIL
16th – South Petherton, The David Hall
17th – Tavistock, The Wharf
18th – Salisbury, Art Centre
23rd – Burton-on-Trent, Deer Barn
24th – Liverpool, Tung Theatre
25th – Wallingford, The Snug Barn
30th – Hailsham, Pavilion
MAY
7th – Gateshead, Glasshouse
8th – Edinburgh, Queen’s Hall
9th – Birmingham, The MAC
JUNE
4th – Norwich, Art Centre
5th – Cambridge, The Junction 1
11th – Manchester, Band On The Wall
12th – Settle, Victoria Hall (Hoganberry)
13th – Settle, Victoria Hall (Hoganberry)
18th – London, Islington Assembly Hall
