Sparkle Up

Tellingly, O’Hagan said that, as a lad, it was The Twilight Zone that rocked his world, because of its power to put him in a very strange place for half an hour once a week. It’s this evocative sense of place — one that you might’ve got especially well in the past from hissy old monophonic records tracked on analog reel-to-reels — that makes the High Llamas a most rarefied listening experience. That place is aided by the painterly work of one Fulton Dingley, by the way, the finest audio engineer ever to draw blade against tape. Or, he would have if O’Hagan had the chance: “We want to spend time and make records in the big 24-track studios,” O’Hagan says, “but we can’t afford it. I absolutely would record with tape any day, any time, but the luxury of recording that way is kind of disappearing.”

Today’s dissonance becomes tomorrow’s consonance, that’s what “they” say. O’Hagan is a self-taught musician, but a real student of music. It’s been a huge advantage in his case — just listen to these fresh ears he’s got, reel backward at his why-not approaches to the organization of pop history’s sounds in ways that just aren’t normally done. Enjoy your solitude in this special place he’s created just for you. O’Hagan’s super-expanding of harmonic and melodic content within the pop context is, without exaggeration, a major contribution to the pop canon, and by a bit of extension, to a much better world in which to live.

The classic High Llamas lineup — O’Hagan, drummer Rob Allum, bassist Jon Fell and multi-instrumentalist Marcus Holdaway — performs at the Troubadour on Saturday, March 6.