The High Llamas
Can Cladders
[Drag City; 2007]
Rating: 7.3
After 2003's Beet, Maize & Corn, Sean O'Hagan undertook a project with artist Pierre Muller to create "Musical Wheel", a web-based collaboration between O'Hagan's music and Muller's paintings. Those who've followed the High Llamas over the past decade and a half, however, may have seen that project as simply a continuation of what O'Hagan had been doing all along. After all, even the Llamas' album covers-- from the transparent modernist linearity of Gideon Gaye's cover collage (a skyscraper, village houses, and a castle juxtaposed against an expressionistic sunrise) to Hawaii's Howard Finster folk art style and bold vacation brochure lettering, to the modernist simplicity of Snowbug and Buzzle Bee-- have always mirrored the music.
Though he's garnered constant (yet fair) comparisons throughout his career to Brian Wilson and Burt Bacharach, Sean O'Hagan's music under the High Llamas banner is as much a pastiche as those album covers. While his delicate melodies and motley arrangements certainly channel his 60s pop heroes, his clear affinity for the bucolic British countryside suggests a similar affinity for the pristine studio-bound daydreams of XTC's Skylarking and Apple Venus, Vol. 1.
What clearly sets the High Llamas apart, however, is O'Hagan's tendency toward retro-futurism, which results in the unique confluence of string quartets with hi-fi lounge-pop instrumentation (organ, vibraphone, clarinet), occasionally drifting toward exotica, the late-50s big band- and Latin-influenced instrumental music that attempted to evoke lush, tropical, and faraway imagined lands. The danger of this approach, of course, is that High Llamas songs are often (especially lately) overburdened, with excessive ingredients outweighing songcraft. Thankfully, Cladders avoids this crutch, and consequently emerges as the most enjoyable High Llamas record in over a decade.
Can Cladders finds O'Hagan balancing his arch musical tendencies with a bounce and sway nearly absent from its largely rhythmless predecessor. "Winter's Day", a blithely told tale of an art theft, opens with a clop-clop canter before giving way to multi-tracked female voices vamping the titular phrase over jazz guitar and rolling piano. It's as close to blue-eyed soul as O'Hagan gets, and, along with the cooed doo-wop chorus of "Clarion Union Hall", suggests his appreciation for the willowy R&B of Scritti Politti. Similarly, the ska-inflected verses of "Honeytrop" give way to the ethereal strings of its chorus, and on "Bacaroo", a lonely, minimalist organ swing periodically emerges from its gossamer surroundings, only to quickly disappear again.
O'Hagan's unique lyrical approach remains intact, with each song a distinct, finely detailed set piece. After establishing the scene of "The Old Spring Town" with "The frost is on the ground, and the ferry's far away," he resurrects Hawaii's touristic wanderlust with a question: "How many times have you been to Mexico?" On "Sailing Bells", O'Hagan's attention is drawn from the ships at sea to the sounds around him, as well as the particular manner in which "the little rocks lay low on the tideline." "Dorothy Ashby" is Cladders' most affecting moment, with O'Hagan eulogizing the jazz harpist in her own element: "Down the concrete steps and into the nightclub/ These are folk who fare above us all/ Feel the music's sad and gentle fall."
The High Llamas share Drag City label space with the most currently prominent harpist, Joanna Newsom, whose musical ambition makes O'Hagan look like Joey Ramone in comparison. It's fitting, then, that Cladders' penultimate track is the playful singalong "Rollin'", on which O'Hagan, no longer content to stand back and observe his surroundings, steps into his own canvas and simply says "Hi" to the landscape himself. For an artist who often finds himself overthinking his craft, it's definitely a refreshing diversion.
-Eric Harvey, February 21, 2007
Review by J. Scott McClintock
Sean O'Hagan and the High Llamas have been accused of emulating everyone from Brian Wilson and Burt Bacharach to Steely Dan and Brian Wilson, along with Brian Wilson, as well as Brian Wilson (with a healthy dash of Brian Wilson in there too, for good measure). Really, it's ridiculous, but what's the harm that a few myopic reviewers can't say anything more telling than "Sean's a Brian Wilson clone"? It's a darn high compliment, given the stature Wilson has achieved, and says more about those music critics' inability to see beyond their own "Top Ten albums of all time" than any creative shortcomings on O'Hagan's part. Get off it! Seriously, this is getting ridiculous. If gorgeous arrangements, unusual instrumentation and innocent wit make you Brian Wilson then why doesn't Neil Hannon, Rufus Wainwright (hell...he's even got Van Dyke Parks on his records) and a host of other gorgeously arranged artists get pegged as Wilson wannabes? Could it be that O'Hagan is simply at the top of the heap -- that he's the pinnacle? Could he be (gulp) as good as Brian Wilson??!!?! He just might be, thank you very much. Pet Sounds, SMiLE and a scant handful of other prime Wilson works, verses O'Hagan and his ten-plus albums of exquisite beauty and detail could sway the (utterly preposterous and fictional) battle right there. But it is precisely O'Hagan's prolific nature that seems to irk his detractors most. "How can this guy keep cranking out these fab records?" (If four years between some albums can be referred to as "cranking it out") or "he's just coasting." Not likely -- but if he is, he's doing so marvelously.
Over the course of their career, the High Llamas successfully combined '60s pop sensibilities with burbling analog synth accents and laid-back, West Coast vibes with a NYC session cat's journeyman aesthetic. Every Llamas album has embraced these creative styles in varying degrees: from Gideon Gaye's decidedly '60s Brit-pop bent, to Hawaii's sprawling and breezy beaches, to Cold and Bouncy's warmly clinical brand of slickness, to Beet, Maize & Corn's detailed chamber pop, the Llamas have succeeded at every slight stylistic turn they have taken. Now, with 2007's Can Cladders, O'Hagan and the Llamas are bringing it all together. Every stylistic element that has ever graced the grooves of their past albums is present here, with synth blurbs and Baroque-via-the-beach string arrangements holding equal footing throughout. Bacharach-ian backing vocals and Wilson-esque instrumentation hold equal ground with Motown rhythms and Steely Dan slick-ery, but the whole thing sounds natural and familiar, rather than over-thought, forced and derivative. Four years in the making, Can Cladders could have come off the presses as an indulgent, overwrought opus. Instead, it simply (but oh-so-craftily) distilled a career's worth of creative tangents into one solid, focused effort that, if you're observant enough, holds its own amongst the likes of the Llamas' comparative "elite."
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