When an artist from a well-loved band releases a solo album there's an assumption that the goal is to put out something radically different than what they are known for. Within seconds of starting up Radum Calls, Radum Calls, the new solo record from Sean O'Hagan, out on Friday via Drag City, a listener is reassured that we are in familiar, and lovely territory once again.
Opener "Candy Clock" positively glides by thanks to vocals from Cathal Coughlan (Microdisney), while "Better Lull Bear" is elegant and spry at the same time, a quality that puts it, like lots of what's here, pretty close to what High Llamas routinely did. Elsewhere, "I Am Here" sounds like the kind of thing that could have underscored a scene in South Pacific. At his best, O'Hagan makes this music positively soar, and there is, at moments here at least, something expansive that suggests, however so slightly, a loosening of the stylistic terms The High Llamas usually operated in. However, "On a Lonely Day (Ding, Dong)" veers wonderfully close to the territory of those best High Llamas sides from the late Nineties.
Sean O'Hagan here on Radum Calls, Radum Calls is playing at being Van Dyke Parks and I guess that's fine for a guy who used to play at being Brian Wilson. I say that not to be flippant but to really praise, the best way I can, how absolutely beautiful lots of this record is. And while Cathal Coughlan's vocals give "Spoken Gem", the longest cut here, a different vibe than what we heard on lots of the old Llamas albums, the track succeeds thanks to horns and an insistent keyboard riff underneath things. And, the truth is that only Sean O'Hagan could record something like the title track on Radum Calls, Radum Calls, a number that echoes Jobim as much as it does any number of classical composers. This is the best kind of chamber pop and the whole album is just like that, thankfully.
Radum Calls, Radum Calls is out on Friday via Drag City.
More details on this Sean O'Hagan project and others can be found at http://highllamas.com, or https://www.seanohaganmusic.com.
[Photo: Steve Brummell]