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From The Desk Of The High Llamas’ Sean O’Hagan: Peckham (Here Come The Rattling Trees, Part 1)

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.

PeckhamPulse

O’Hagan: So how does one create a platform for the telling of six stories? When the stories cover a variety of themes, you need one common factor to bring them together, the umbrella under which we gather. These stories were, in hindsight, a timeline for my time in Peckham, which I’ve called home now for 28 years.The area has undergone incredible change in that time, mainly over the last eight years. I remember the pub I lived next door to in 1989 as a south London haunt with older West Indian guys slamming dominoes onto red formica tables in the public bar, and Bermondsey boys dishing out Friday bonuses in the lounge. I knew I needed a protagonist, a sympathetic listener, a willing audience for the Peckham tales. At first I thought of a door man on a night club, but I just could not reconcile this chatty chap with the characters waiting to talk to him.

One day while standing in Peckham Square, a public space created to form a community hub between Peckham Library and the Peckham Pulse, I created Amy. She was to be a dreamy 28-year-old woman on a temp working contract handing out leaflets in the square. Quite simply, she would engage passing clients in conversation in the course of her days work. And so Amy would somehow be this empathetic soul, create connections and conversations and offer our new friends an opportunity to tell their story. Well, it convinced me and I did not have to resort to creating a mild-mannered gent in a rocking chair reading by candlelight.

That will be in the next show …