Musician Sean O’Hagan has built his post-Microdisney music career on one dogmatic, unswerving belief – that music began and ended with Pet Sounds, and that’s that. Whilst you have to admire his bloodymindedness, his music – occasionally enjoyable, but mostly derivative, slight, the work of a slavish student rather than an inspired genius – is a lot harder to love.
Here Come the Rattling Trees is a case in point. The soundtrack to a stage play about the gentrification of O’Hagan’s home patch of Peckham, it makes absolutely zero sense shorn of its context. Half-formed lo-fi sketches like “Amy Recalls – Barham Trees” and “Mona Underscore – Slow Down Mona” may have some meaning as part of the theatre performance, but when you haven’t had the benefit of hearing the accompanying monologues, and thus have no idea who Amy and Mona are, they are meaningless, and lack the substance to stand alone.
There’s a handful of fully-realised songs here, of which the gently affecting title track is probably the best. “McKain James” has a more memorable tune than the rest, but only because it references the theme music to long forgotten (by everyone apart from myself and O’Hagan, obviously) US sitcom Big John, Little John.
No doubt if you are a High Llamas completist and went to see the play, this soundtrack will bring back happy memories. For everyone else, it’s a meaningless collection of studio doodles.
[Rating:1]
