Michael Draine's Twisted Vista
High Llamas
Retrospective: Rarities and Instrumentals 2CD
(V2 Records)
High Llama Sean O’Hagan’s lush orchestration
has enriched every Stereolab album from
1992’s Space Age Bachelor Pad Music to
2002’s Sound Dust. While comparison
between O’Hagan and Smile-era Brian
Wilson is inevitable, O’Hagan articulates
a sense of longing and lost innocence
entirely his own. Repeated listening
reveals the melancholy tidal
meditations of Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom
as a deeper influence. Even the track
selection on this 1992-2000 anthology
betrays a painful honesty, laying bear		Music Review Index
O’Hagan’s repeated use of a few stock
melodies. (A banjo lick more suggestive of
“Sesame Street” than “Cabin Essence” wears
out its welcome the fourth time it crops up.)
The mostly-instrumental second disc fully
displays O’Hagan’s gifts as an arranger of
orchestrated bliss, delivering a magic hour
of fluent strings, melancholy brass, and
keening chimes. Cheaper than a fistful of
Percocet, easier to find than God.
Published in Worldly Remains #8, 2003
www.dragcity.com/bands/highllamas.html
http://us.v2music.com