Sean O'Hagan, the High Llamas, and looking to the future
Sean O'Hagan of the High Llamas. Picture: Simon Russell
“It was a special moment watching the doc on TV.” says Sean O’Hagan about The Clock Comes Down the Stairs: The Story of Microdisney the music documentary about his first band, with his songwriting partner Cathal Coughlan, that recently aired on BBC Four.
The documentary framed Microdisney’s story by juxtaposing a lack of commercial success in the 1980s against the Cork band’s triumphant reunion in 2018. The film ends emotionally with footage of Coughlan filmed shortly before his untimely passing in May 2022.
After Microdisney broke up, O’Hagan formed The High Llamas, an enduring group who have just released Hey Panda, their 11th album. Over 30 years in existence, the band’s longevity is without doubt one measure of success. While the Microdisney film looked at the past, Hey Panda looks to the future; it’s a contemporary-sounding pop music production.
“I normally don’t get excited about record releases because there’s been a few of them over the years. They don’t really mean a lot in the great scheme of things,” says O’Hagan. “You become accustomed to it, so what you do is you set yourself up for disappointment. This is what anybody who works in a creative medium does, we set ourselves up constantly for disappointment.”
This time though, O’Hagan is optimistic about how Hey Panda will be received: “There’s a very good feeling, and it’s a culmination of several things. It’s been a while since the last record and also it’s just a very different sound for me. I’m forcing myself into a departure and I’m at the age and the stage where you do everything on your own terms and success is somebody getting in touch and saying, ‘I love the new single, it’s wonderful’. That’s success. It isn’t anything to do with statistics or numbers.”
The roots of Hey Panda’s modern sound go back to O’Hagan’s 2019 solo album. “When I made Radum Calls Radum Calls, I really started playing with electronic music again. I’d write ballads and then there would be electronic interruption in the ballads and it kind of made perfect sense to me,” says O’Hagan.
“I think the most successful songs on the record were 'Battle Lull Bear' which is an instrumental and 'McCardle Brown', which Cathal sang. It was amazing actually to be writing the songs I wanted to write, bringing back that electronic production value and Cathal’s singing. This couldn’t get better.
“Even though nobody heard the record and it didn't really have any kind of a profile, it certainly gave me a little bit of confidence. So, I thought that I could make another record as the High Llamas and not fear.”
In 2021 O’Hagan worked with Benjamin Garrett, better known as Fryars, and the experience proved enlightening. “I met Ben Garrett, Fryars, and he asked me to make his record God Melodies. I made the record, did the arrangements and played. I learned so much from working with him,” recalls O’Hagan. “This guy works with Mark Ronson, Lily Allen, Skepta, Dave, all sorts of people. So his contemporary knowledge, abilities and participation are well documented.
“He taught me so much and I just relearned the whole programming thing and I learned an awful lot about R&B rhythm, and I loved it. I loved the music I was listening to: Khalid, Noname, Mount Kimbie, Tyler, Pivot, Daniel Caesar, Frank Ocean, all of those people.”
O’Hagan’s love of Tyler the Creator is reciprocated. In 2013 the superstar rapper and producer took to Twitter to praise the High Llamas’ song 'Dorothy Ashby' from their 2007 album Can Cladders.
O’Hagan’s passion for new music is infectious. “There’s new, really exciting pop music. I keep going around saying to people of my age to stop talking about the past as the Golden Age and to listen up because we might be in the Golden Age. So, I said with the next record I’m definitely going to let go, and I’m going to occupy this space.”
Fryars adds some production twists to Hey Panda. Rae Morris and Livvy O’Hagan provide backing vocals. “I made Rae Morris’s record, who’s married to Fryars, and she’s involved and Livvy, my daughter, was involved big time,” says O’Hagan. “Livvy used to play me so much new stuff. I’d say, ‘What’s that?’ And it was incredible. I feel very young with this music.”
Along with his new collaborators old friends also contribute to the record. “Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy got involved and sent me two sets of lyrics and we were talking about gospel music. I said, ‘OK, I'll write the tunes like gospel but I’m going to tune my voice, and I’m going to be putting the Subs in. He was like, ‘Yes, Sean, I've always wanted to do that but never knew how to’. At every stage it was just so joyful.
“I hope it doesn’t feel embarrassing like an old 64-year-old guy making contemporary pop records.”
With age comes experience. “I’ll tell you one very funny thing,” laughs O’Hagan. “When I went into the studio Ben said, ‘let’s start playing stuff’. I said, ‘Ben, turn it down, mate. I can’t hear. When you listen to things loud, it’s great fun, but you can’t hear detail, turn it down, then you can hear the detail.’ He said. ‘Okay’.”
- Hey Panda is out now on Drag City Records
The High Llamas - Hawaii (1996): Recently featured in our Ireland in 50 Albums series, Hawaii’s 29 songs play like one long 77-minute piece of symphonic pop. It sounded completely out of step with the prevailing sounds of the mid-90s.
Turn On (1997): O’Hagan was a member of Stereolab for a number of years and Turn On is his collaboration with the avant-pop band’s Tim Gane and Andy Ramsey. A thrilling experimental record.
The High Llamas - Cold and Bouncy (1998): Where Hawaii was a very prepared album, a lot of Cold & Bouncy was done in the studio inspired by sounds of the late-90s particularly the German electronica of Mouse on Mars, Microstoria and Oval.
The High Llamas - Here Come the Rattling Trees (2016): A soundtrack to the theatre production of the same name introducing us to six characters from Peckham. It speaks of buildings and change; of hopes, ambitions and disappointments.
Sean O'Hagan – Radum Calls, Radum Calls (2019): O’Hagan’s second solo album, his first since 1990’s High Llamas. ‘The Paykan (Laili’s Song)’ is one of the highlights telling how one of the Shah’s servants escaped Iran during the Islamic revolution. Cathal Coughlan provides lead vocals on two songs.
