High Llamas have always had a base of tastefully arranged chamber-pop from which they've roamed and dabbled in other styles: Their first few albums radiated a fair amount of early 70s AM radio sheen, while Cold and Bouncy was soaked in late 90s electronics. Along the way they've folded in some Brazil and a whole lot of Brian. With Beat Maize & Corn, they've stripped their music down to its bare essence and vacuum-sealed it. Here, High Llamas are in essential oil mode, where a few drops could be used to color any number of pop music styles from the last 100 years. For good or ill, this is Sean O'Hagan at his purest and most minimal.
You don't often come across a modern album that sounds so damn old. With the arrangements O'Hagan has chosen, Beet Maize & Corn could have been played faithfully in 1850. Though the sleeve lists O'Hagan on electric guitar, you never hear it. Every other instrument is acoustic. Most songs are built around his nylon-stringed strumming, with bits of piano and vibes, and then plenty horns and strings added for coloring. Shakers and rim taps on a couple songs constitute the entirety of the percussion. If there's even the slightest hint of "rock" to Beet Maize & Corn, it's the softest variety ever played.
It's an old fogey of a record, but still timeless in its own way. It's difficult to imagine what would occasion it, but if in the year 2040 I were to pull Beet Maize & Corn from the shelf and play it for someone who'd never heard of High Llamas they probably wouldn't come close to guessing its age. No crackle, so it can't be 1935. No lounge irony, so it can't be 1995. Just simple melodies, not-so-simple harmonies, and the same strings/horns timbre that's drifted in and out of pop song fashion since the wax cylinder.
The tunes, though. Goddammit, why can't they manage the tunes? Sean O'Hagan is the best possible argument for melody writing being an inborn talent. If great melodies were simply a matter of hard work, then O'Hagan would be at the top of the craft. But for all his perfectly pitched arrangements and restless harmonic movement, we still have his drab songs sung by his dull voice. The "best" songs here, like, uh, "High on the Chalk", I guess, are barely more memorable or noteworthy than the worst. Sometimes a particular swoop of strings will get me, as on the painfully nostalgic "The Click and the Fizz", other times the background vocals (including contributions from the late Mary Hansen) will grate slightly, as on "Porter Dimi". But that's about it for the ups and downs. Mostly, Beet Maize & Corn just hangs in the background, which I reckon is A-OK by Sean O'Hagan.
