2000 Great Songs #1509: Theatreland

I'm a big sucker for artists who take the complex, baroque sunshine pop created by Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys in the mid/late 60s, the gentle weirdness of the Smile era and its immediate aftermath, and give it a contemporary shine. (I recently shared my updated mix of some favorites of the genre.) One of the coolest albums in this vein is the High Llamas' 1996 release Hawaii, a motif best captured on "Theatreland." If you bottled up an afternoon leaning back in the grass, watching the clouds drift by, and took it back to the music studio, it might sound a bit like this.

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