It might seem unusual, at first: British folk/pop auteur Sean O’Hagan padding Here Come The Rattling Trees—his latest outing as bandleader of the High Llamas—with several breezy musical snippets that work as either introductions or codas to delicate, fully realized songs. But in fact, the project first coalesced as a narrative the singer scripted about his South London neighborhood of Peckham, where a local working-class recreation center was being threatened by snooty gentrification. But it quickly morphed into a full-scale production that he staged at a Covent Garden theater—hence the inclusion of rising and descending motifs. O’Hagan will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new High Llamas feature.
O’Hagan: I’m not a natural lyricist. I struggle. There are and have been many wonderful words written to song over thousands of years. When its right, it’s a as wondrous as the coming together of film and music. But we all know that there is also a closed formulaic lyric, an industry lyric, which just kills any wonder that may have been there when the writer was just humming that original tune. I understand the notion of reaching instinctively for something unique, close to your experience. But that seems to manifest itself in so many cases as personal personal, if you get my meaning. I have also noted over the years that critics seem to gravitate towards the personal personal, perhaps hoping that they are being told the untellable. I wonder is this a rights-of-passage thing. How many times have I read “never lose your anger.”
I spent 10 years in a band called Microdisney. My co-writer was Cathal Coughlan. He wrote and still writes words of such impact and originality that they could almost be biblical, though they most certainly are not. After Cathal, I still love Will Oldham’s writing, and recently I can not stop listening to Nina Simone’s brilliant celebrational style.
I once wrote a lyric that went: “Take my hand and run it through the sand.” It sounded OK, and it was in an attempt to capture a moment of true happiness as I sat on an Welsh beach when my daughter was nine years old. We were sharing a sunny moment, and I realised that I could never be happier than this moment. OK. I wrote about it, but it was not sentimental or revealing. “Take my hand and run it through the sand.” Said it all. A critic (online in the U.S., I think ), who I think liked the music, said it was a pitty that the lyrics were a nonentity. “Take my hand and run it through the sand.” She said. That’s it over and over. (There were plenty of others words, BTW.) I thought I got it right. True happiness expressed without the personal personal. Maybe its something that comes to you with age.
BTW, my daughter insists she wrote the lyric.
