Gold Star

Gold Star represents the Americana solo venture of Marlon Rabenreither, an artist based in Los Angeles who also plays with the punk outfit CG Roxanne & the Nightmares. His breakthrough arrived via the 2015 release of his first album, Dark Days.

Rabenreither entered the world in Vienna, Austria, and later studied at Goldsmiths art college in London. He next relocated to New York for several years of fruitless attempts to gain traction. Seeking a fresh environment, he shifted to Los Angeles and assembled the Sister Ruby Band, a group that blended shoegaze textures with West Coast psychedelia and issued the lone LP In Cold Blood in 2011.

Lucinda Williams emerged as an early supporter and invited Rabenreither to serve as her solo opener. Retaining the same personnel from Sister Ruby Band, he launched Gold Star, whose sound leaned toward acoustic, old-time textures shaped by Leonard Cohen, John Lennon, Neil Young, and especially Bob Dylan, whose vocal timbre Rabenreither echoed to a noticeable degree.

After the self-released, self-titled 2012 EP, Gold Star delivered its debut full-length Dark Days in 2015. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club producer Nic Jodoin captured the sessions on vintage analog equipment, a method repeated for the 2017 successor Big Blue, which appeared on Autumn Tone Records and took its title from Rabenreither’s blue wooden residence in East Hollywood. The third album, Uppers and Downers, followed in 2018, marking an expansion into roots rock and country-rock within the Gold Star framework.