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High Llamas present Hey Panda?-?a
modern pop music/deep listening
experience that could only issue
forth from their personal quadrant
of the galaxy. Hey Panda projects
soulfully through an enervating
abstract of today's popular music;
the sound of the Llamas' stately
melodies and expressive ditties laid
open?-?blissfully shattered?-?with
drums and vocals hitting different, burning sounds and contemporary production twists pulling
the ear at every turn.
For the past few decades,
High Llamas have trafficked
in contemporary pop sounds
directed toward the avant
end of the spectrum as much
as not. But here the message was clear. Llamas' composer-in-residence Sean O'Hagan was determined to
let go. Hey Panda does just that, with a set of tunes
reflecting on multiple levels how definitions change over
the course of a lifetime, radiating an optimism derived
from the diverse conundrums of today.
Eight years since their last release, the pop musical Here Come The Rattling Trees, High Llamas
have reinvented themselves again, mixing their peerless harmonic voice with what Sean regards as the
"extraordinarily good" production sounds of today
on Hey Panda.
Choosing not to look backward to former golden
ages celebrated in earlier Llamas eras, Sean's
instead found himself opened up by the sounds of
music brought into the house by his adult children
and the sounds encountered at sessions for which
he's recently written arrangements. In addition to
the more traditional contributions he made to The
Coral's Sea of Mirrors album, plus his score for
the Safdie brothers' 2022 film production, Funny
Pages, Sean's drawn great inspiration through working with Fryars,
Rae Morris, King Krule, Pearl and
The Oyster, while also soaking up
the work of Tierra Whack and
Chicago's Pivot Gang, and being
cheered on from a distance by longtime admirer Tyler The Creator.
Thus, Sean's producer procedural has evolved again, with
upgrades first detected in his
2019 solo effort, Radum Calls,
Radum Calls. With a cover of
Billie Eilish's "Wish You Were
Gay" arranged for Bill Callahan and Bonnie Prince Billy's
Blind Date Party, along with
his COVID-era solo single, "The
Wild Are Welcome," Sean has
leveled up again and again, leading to the delirious revelations of Hey Panda.
Hey Panda's wide reach is aided by two co-writes
from Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, (who bonded with Sean
over a shared love of gospel soul during writing sessions),
guest vocals from Rae Morris and Sean's daughter
Livvy, production twists from Fryars and the stalwart,
flexible presence of High Llamas.
For all of its sense of departure, Hey Panda is a
movement in the High Llamas oeuvre that's been a
long time in development. Aspects of soul music were
addressed at the time of Can Cladders; similarly,
aspects of electronic dance music were in the mix in
the late 90s, around the time of Cold and Bouncy.
But nothing up to now has refocused the music of
High Llamas so completely. Sharing the impulse of
late-period Miles Davis and Quincy Jones, with
further inspiration from Steve Lacy, SZA, Sault,
No Name and Ezra Collective, among many others, Sean O'Hagan and High Llamas are living
joyfully in the new and the now, with Hey Panda!