REVIEW: High Llamas, Cold and Bouncy (Alpaca/V2)
- Daniel Aloi
Here it is, early 1998, and in certain pop-cultural circles you'd think it was still 1966. Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Doors are as popular as ever. Freedom of expression reigns. And we've hit a high point for '60s musical worship, with the resurgence of lounge music and a British pop ethic adopted by many contemporary bands -- Dandy Warhols, Candy Butchers and the like. You can pin this trend on a) a reaction to grunge and rap and b) the enduring influence of '60s melody masters the Beach Boys, Burt Bacharach and the Beatles, all of whom spun out such memorable candyfloss that their influence is nearly impossible to deny. These three B's of pop seem to be on a continuous tape loop inside the skull of head High Llama Sean O'Hagan. He may have decidedly different musical credentials with Microdisney and Stereolab, but with this band he consistently refuses to stray too far from his synths-in-a-sandbox Brian Wilson obsession.
That's not a criticism -- O'Hagan doesn't plunder the undeniable past any more than, say, Elvis Costello - and there are much worse heroes he could emulate. But unfortunately on the aptly titled "Cold and Bouncy," O'Hagan and his band's pet sounds don't quite match up to the originals, and he adds little in original viewpoint to the pure pop feeling he's recreating. Lacking the layered harmonies and walls of wonderful sound that Beach Boy Brian built from scratch, songs like "The Sun Beats Down" and "Tilting Windmills" provide only a surface reading of an attempt to recreate Wilson's "teenage symphonies to God."
Instead the "cold" electronic gurgles and gleeps throughout the album take over, to the point that even "warm" instruments (banjo, vibes) are so deliberately plunked they sound like samples. The overall effect is distance from the heart that one thinks should be behind this music. "Over the River" and "Didball" sound like lost Bacharach scores -- in fact, these tracks and some of the Llamas' instrumentals play as if originally written as soundtrack filler for some European film in the '60s (naturally), perhaps a spy caper-romance set aboard a submarine cruising off the French Riviera.
Still, "Cold and Bouncy" is enjoyable, not to be taken too seriously -- and what more could you ask of a pop album? Just don't get all nostalgic and hold it up to Wilson's now-flickering but once-bright candle and it's a fine listen, with more than an hour of melodic whimsy that seems to float by in half that time.
