Last Night I Heard The Dog Star Bark

With this fluid, free-raging music, Raymond is in a world of her own - one with several moons and its own intoxicating atmosphere. [Oct 2025, p.85]

The Welsh guitarist hammers at her instrument, unleashing a percussive rain of notes that fray and change as they linger. She plays fast and hard and with assurance, whether in the blue-grassy “Cattywomp” or the mystic drone of “Jack Parsons Blues.” And then, just for the beauty of it, she dips into languid lyricism for “Dreams of Rhiannon’s Birds,” letting the notes drip like warm honey, catching the light as they go.

This is a record that chafes at the furthest out fringes of guitar lexicon; respectful of her influences while seeking out individualistic plains, ‘Last Night I Heard The Dog Star Bark’ is something to set your compass by.

Raymond tells timeless tales through her free-spirited performances. If, sometimes, it feels as if seventeen separate melodies are somehow being flung from six strings and two sets of five fingers at once, then know that all of nature, its blooming flowers, its swooping birds, appear in our ears because of her innate command of an explosive musical articulation.