Pitchfork

Here are two things you will never hear any sane person say about Sean O'Hagan: That he doesn't have a singular musical vision, and that he's not committed to it. For nearly two decades, O'Hagan has been busily hollowing out a nook that's all his, both with his own High Llamas and as an adjunct contributor to Stereolab. You could call his work a pastiche of retro sounds-- Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach, Tin Pan Alley, bossa nova, 1950s exotica, 60s soundtracks. Then again, anyone familiar with his signature twinkle-and-bounce can spot one of his arrangements within three chords, unless you trick them with the theme from "The Odd Couple" TV series. And for a good while, those arrangements provided exactly what a lot of 90s listeners seemed to look for: the creation, on CD, of other little worlds, sunnier or trippier or just quainter than our own.

Listeners in the new millennium seem to like things a lot less escapist-- music that's social and fiery and engaged-- and it's only this year that the High Llamas have gotten some praise for breaking a few steps off the old O'Hagan script. When it comes to film soundtracks, though, creating hermetic little worlds is precisely the idea, and it's incredibly wise for director Marc Fittousi to have tapped O'Hagan and Stereolab partner Tim Gane to score a comedy like La Vie d'Artiste. Clever indie folks may hear these strings lilt and think more O'Hagan-- and this is surely O'Hagan's world, more than Gane's. All those who step into this film fresh, on the other hand, will leave with this sound printed in their brains as the world of this film and this film alone-- never mind that this music could have done an awfully similar job for Amelie or The Science of Sleep.

And they'll appreciate it, one imagines: these two discs of short cues work pretty well as a sort of Pocket O'Hagan. The brevity of the cues lets him do what he does best, setting up some new reconfiguration of quaint, light 60s bounce, shooting it through with string colorations and soft horns and harpsichord melodies, and then brushing onward before your brain objects that it gets the picture. Their range also lets him pull in directions he otherwise might not: shades of John Barry's James Bond music in dangerous moments, or doo-wop idylls that could be Françoise Hardy backing tracks.

The value of a soundtrack, though, is different from the value of the actual discs you might take home, and some logistical problems weigh this stuff down pretty heavily. The cues are short, which forestalls any kind of steady, close attention to this stuff; they also circle around melodic themes, something that's grand when you're watching a film, but can make home listeners feel like they left the disc on repeat. It's also an open question how many O'Hagan devotees need the bite-size sampler or the pocket edition; High Llamas records probably aren't as good for walking around pretending you're in a charming French comedy, but they also won't give you two-minute mood shifts on the subway. It might be best to leave this one to the people it's for: the lovers of this film who'll get to carry a signature sound around as a reminder of it.