Customer Reviews

Beet Maize & Corn

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I love everything this band does. I think O'Hagan is an incredibly gifted songwriter and few bands put out music that is more beautiful. Even Buzzle Bee, my introduction to the band, which I bought exclusively because I'm mesmorized by "The Passing Bell", which I still think is the LLamas' best song, has grown on me immenselly as langorous and perplexing as it is.

Nothing prepared me for this album though. It is one of the most beautiful albums I've ever heard anywhere. The first few times you hear it, its so simple, brave and stunning that you don't really know what it is you're listening to. I didn't really get a feel for how well written, catchy and cohesive each song was until the third or fourth listen.

Despite the fact that the sound of this album is one that is simply never heard anymore in pop music, it is entirely familiar, like an older family member's hand me down sweater. It reminds me of Christmas and childhood. Its really a gorgeous album and every song is incredible once you've heard it enough to enjoy the intricacies.

A girl who heard it with me said it made her want to dance. I was puzzled at first, but ever since I imagine slow dancing to this album every time I listen to it. The kind of slow dance where her eyes are moist, the stars are out, the moon is full and its your wedding.

The big news for for Llamas fans is that, for the most part, this CD features very little electronic instrumentation. The sound harkens back to 'Hawaii', with beautiful string and horn arrangements carrying most of the melodic load. The obvious result of this switch is a CD that is much warmer sounding than the somewhat disappointing 'Buzzle Bee' CD, where it was becoming apparent that O'Hagan & Co. had reached a creative dead-end. So, even though some of Beet Maize & Corn sounds like recycled ideas from 'Hawaii', there's a freshness here that the distance of time has created. Their tendency towards excessive repetition has been kept in check, and the songs are just as long as they need to be; the listener's patience is never tested. I guess I never will understand the cryptic lyrics of the High Llamas songs, but words never seem to be what this group is all about anyway. The human voice becomes just another dimension in the overall sound, and what a lush and beautiful sound it is on Beet, Maize, & Corn. One song flows seemlessly into the next weaving an intricate and radiant tapestry of music that can only be appreciated by attentive listening. The memorable meoldies make this is a CD that is easy to love. Sure, it's music for the mind, but your heart may just find a place for it too. Yeah, its good- real good.

I first heard about the Llamas in a reference made by a music critic reviewing the Beatles Let It Be...Naked album. He suggested saving your money on that, and picking this up instead. I guess there is a little bit of Sgt. Pepper/Revolver going on here, but Brian Wilson and Burt Bacharach are the men they really channel.

If you want to know where to jump in with this group, this album is evidently an acceptable place, even though it's their most recent. The mood varies from warm and sunny to dimly-lit room late at night stuff. I love every track, but especially the closing song, The Walworth River. The lyrics are beautiful, but almost completely inscrutable (they do hommage Van Dyke Parks after all).

Having said all this, here's a warning: I've played it a few times for different people I care about, and so far I've gotten so-so feedback. This is a great album IMHO in a 'Pet Sounds' or 'Smile' kind of way, but maybe it's not for everyone's ear.

Now that the 90s are over, a generation of supposedly lost souls must look elsewhere for the music to soothe their supposedly savage breast. If ever there was an age in which soft emotions were expressed with raw sounds, it was the 90s - but the decade that opened with grunge and the hip-hop boom quickly gave way to a diversity of approaches, from indie-rock to the nu-bubblegum, boy-band thing to the retro sounds of...well, just about everybody. #1 on the retro hit parade was High Llamas, who delivered a shocking approximate of the Beach Boys' "Smile" filtered through early-70s technology and therefore twisted up with the savvy-smooth Steely Dan era. With each album, High Llamas widened their scope, adding Bacharach-love, Latin and world-beats and electronic sounds to the mix. When last heard from on 2000s "Buzzle Bee," their approach was being perceived as a dead-end in some circles. Good news, then, that "Beet, Maize and Corn" is a fresh take on High Llamas of the past. Some of Sean O'Hagan's best melodies are here, framed spaciously with arrangements stripped of the Lllamas former post-modern kitchen-sink catchall. However, repeated listens reveal more and more in the mix, making the experience of "Beet, Maize and Corn" more entertaining and somehow more emotional as well. It's a real departure on one level and a 'best-ever' entry on another. Best of all, it's a record by a middle-age band that acts its age, providing soothing sounds that distract and edify in their turn. "Beet, Maize and Corn" is adult-child music, a real treat in this day and age - or any other, really!

Those are the words I think of when I listen to this album...this group has come a long way from the Hawaii days to this new record. Gone are the electronics, which took a while for me to adjust to, since Cold/Bouncy is my favorite album from them. Also absent for the most part is percussion, save for light touches on a couple of joints. Strings are at the front of this album all the way through, and it really showcases Sean's arranging ability. Sean's voice is also more upfront, which could be a bad thing to some. To me, he sounds better than ever before, as he's not trying to hit notes he can't. Very relaxed style. Some of the lyrics I can actually relate to "It's time to look for somewhere new" is the first that comes to mind. It's a short album (40 minutes) but it does the job...the arrangment from High On The Chalk ties the album together sort of, but there's no real theme to it. Just more beautiful melodies/arrangments that you come to expect from the group. Might be the most accessible record they have made also. If you're a fan already, its definitely worth picking up. It might drag a little at first, but it reveals itself after multiple listens.

Folks, let's face it. Sean O'Hagan is every bit the musical "genius" that, say, Brian Wilson. But because the High Llamas music is not easily accessible to most people(as far as radio play..it has'nt gotten any), it does not diminish the fact that this group plays some of the most elegant orchestrated, electronic, vibrant music ever put on record. Especially after seeing a live performance by them at the Troubador in Hollywood, I was somewhat stunned that they sound even better in person. O.K., maybe not everyone will "get" their music. But if ever I,m dying of a terminal illness, I,ve instructed those closest to me to let me go into the next world with this CD and a pair of headphones. And I would'nt be surprised when I get to Heaven, that they will be getting plenty of "airplay" there.

I'll admit to having been a High Llamas junkie since the late '90's. But to hear a recording this superb from a band I consider among the best of the best is like watching the most beautiful plant in your garden in full bloom. To me, this is pop music at its most intelligent, its most beautiful, its most transcendent. Lush, pastoral, organic, soothing, challenging -- this disk is a musical feast for the senses, going down like a sip of the finest single malt. Even their lyrics (kind of a cross between an urban planning manual and an unearthed travelogue from some bygone era) wash over you in a way that's both amusing and moving. I'm sure the joke is on O'Hagan.

Thank God for the High Llamas, who are making chamber pop music that's steeped in the spirit and style of Bacharach and Wilson (speaking of Gods!) yet evolved to a sound that's both antique and far beyond (note the stunningly jarring electric guitar that comes and goes in "High On the Chalk"). Tell your friends about them. Go see them when they tour.

Contemporary music needs the High Llamas. I don't want to put down much of today's pop music in comparison, but let's just say there's a place in life for Tiffany crystal as well as a Dixie cup. To be sure, not everyone will get the High Llamas. Consider yourself lucky if you do. But do sample this CD before you buy.

Sure, sure, if you give even a casual listen to the most popish elements of the High Llamas better known albums, Hawaii or Gideon Gaye (as most youngish American big-city music-boys have likely done some time during the last ten years) you are going to remember the High Llamas as something pretty cool, certainly very talented, if not also a little daft, or at least daftly repetitive!

I had fairly given up on them, or, more accurately, forgotten about them, until a rather exciting first time Brian Wilson love fest began for me sometime in late 2002. Brian leads fairly quickly to the High Llamas, and for the first time since 1997 went back to them a beggar and a believer. In impulsive fits, my High Llamas collection began anew and grew. Beet Maize & Corn, is the most recent risk I felt ready for.

Well, to say the least these are some deeply studied creations, with a new sound structure that comes in rhythms and waves of acoustic piano, strings, horns, and guitars. It's an almost crushingly tasteful effect, yet the lyrics seem fully politically aligned, [left, of course], bringing with them a flowering of irony both unsettling and light. A great feeling of old fashioned 'rightness' in the arrangements lends the whole procedings a timelessness worthy of the very best ranks of....what?....jazz standards?....vaudevillian ballads?

'What am I really hearing in this thing?' is what you will eventually want to confront, if only to prolong the love affair with this album. Whatever it is best described as though, my dear God, the final song, The Walworth River, after the buildup of the album, is the most utterly devastating music experience.

Listen with some caution, though, lest you fall down the well of talent of Mr. Sean O'Hagan. Appearing to be a late 30ish man in the Llama's 2004 Chicago little tour for this album, he seemed smirkingly good natured and shy, until he nicely blurted out 'George Bush is such a f-ing arse!' to the simple cheers of a mostly young male audience.

This light public persona, a regular-guy brit genius kind of thing, seemed to mask some of the mystery in his songs, forgivable in front of complete strangers of course. As such I'm fairly longing for the next album, coming as it may with his wistful messages of our twilit freedom.

Whew!

This album is a strange experience. I listened to the tracks for the first time on a warn night with the last of the days light was coming in my window. I believe that it works more successfully to alot of the other records put out by this band as it is a very organic sounding album. The songs are for the most part slow and winding. There is very little in the way of drum beats. It is an album that is very much a mood record. It projects a mood and I believe it does this very well. The songs sound so familar, in many cases this is not a good thing. But here the melodies are rich and rewarding. I have found this was a very different type of record to the new stereolab album, this record is not pop. It is a blend of jazz with some melodies that sound like the beach boys if they had aged gracefully and Brian Wilson had not lived to the 80s. It is an aquired taste. It is a very medative album, a great album to read to or to watch the last of the day fade away.

Gorgeous, beautiful, harmonious, what else? Duke said there's only good music & bad music. This is great music. The usual echoes of Brian, Burt, John Simon, V.D.P., etc. Only difference is that this time it really sounds like the High Llamas. Poised & Mature. One for the ages.