Talahomi Way

As anyone who has followed the career of Sean O’Hagan can tell you, he lives to find the subtle spaces in the music to pour in his love for the Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks and Burt Bacharach. Talahomi Way is O’Hagan’s easy listening album. It features bossa nova beats, airy woodwinds and strings that evoke Nelson Riddle as much as anything by Parks. The album is a beaut. If anyone has a right to the music of the Mad Men era, it’s a careful scholar like O’Hagan, who with Microdisney, Stereolab and the High Llamas has explored this terrain with authority. “Woven and Rolled” has a horn section adding brightness to this mix of acoustic guitars, strings and halting beats. “The Ring of Gold” strolls past with a spring breeze that reminds one of the glories of stereophonic recordings. There’s a slight rockabilly twinkle to the light and fluffy “A Rock In May.” The album is packed with retro-surprises. But it suffers not from a nostalgic eye. O’Hagan is merely exploring a genre that has yet to be exhausted.