Delivering Pastoral Perfection with a Middle Class Mindset

For anyone who’s ever wondered what type of album Arthur Dent may have put the needle down on during his days before the end of the world, we’ve found your answer – it’s Here Come The Rattling Trees by The High Llamas.

Essentially the brainchild of musical powerhouse Sean O’Hagen, The High Llamas have been churning out an astonishing lineage of layered arrangements, intricate production, honeyed harmonies and smart orchestration since 1994, an enterprise that inevitably gets compared to the Beach Boys, though at first listen Margo Guryan, Burt Bacharach and Ennio Morricone may just come to mind.

Boasting a sprawling discography of well thought out, neatly arranged albums to which many a genre gets pinned (Baroque pop, 60s melody pop, bossa nova, lounge and folktronica, to name a few) and in which no instrument goes unturned, unplucked or passed over, The High Llamas are set to release Here Come The Rattling Trees (the first since 2011’s Talahomi Way) via Drag City on January 22nd. Of the record, Drag City promises “A daze in the life: five views to the low-key ups and downs of the British middle class — slipped in between the pages and too often passed over in everyday life; reanimated in bucolic, sympathetic Llamas beats.”

Billed as a musical narrative, Here Comes The Rattling Trees is essentially a concept album of pastoral, lounge layered melodies, adapted ingeniously as ‘reshaped theater’. Initially performed as a stage production at the Montpelier Theater Pub in Peckham circa 2014 and then in a week long stint at the Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden, London, the album is a collection of 16 character driven narratives set around a wanderlust infused 28 year old named Amy and the people she encounters handing out leaflets in Peckham Square.

Here Come The Rattling Trees definitively delivers, even without the background knowledge of what the effort is supposed to convey. It deftly paints a provincial picture of quaintness and daily humdrum, rendering it with beautiful simplicity and generous amounts of xylophone. With each track clocking in anywhere from half a minute to three minutes and some change, each song fits into the character heavy narrative in a fluid, clean and relatable manner – these sixteen easy servings of day-to-day will float seamlessly into yours.