Beet, Maize & Corn sees the band further retreating from the complexity that characterized their mid-90’s output. O’Hagan states in a 2011 interview that “by the time Beet, Maize & Corn happened we had made a lot of records, with so many ideas and so many ambitions”. By this time, O’Hagan’s work as an arranger had become increasingly gainful, and as such, the album marked the beginning of a period of reduced output from the Llamas compared to their prodigious output throughout the 90’s.

On Beet, Maize & Corn, strings play their largest role on a Llamas album since Hawaii. O’Hagan, heavily influenced by composers Georges Bizet and Frederick Delius during this period, aimed to capture “the gentle autumn sparseness, the idea of the troubadour coming upon a set of songs. England was very much with me at the time, and I wanted to make an English record.”

While much of Beet, Maize & Corn was recorded at home (though the strings and brass were recorded in a separate location in Streatham) Fulton Dingley remained at the helm for his final collaboration with the band to date. The cover art, depicting the Elephant and Castle area in London, was painted by artist Jeremy Glogan, marking the start of a collaboration with the band that would continue through 2016’s Here Come The Rattling Trees.

Beet, Maize & Corn was released in October 2003 by Duophonic in the UK/Europe and Drag City in the US and received warm reviews, with AllMusic’s Tim Sendra writing: “the entire record is overflowing with pastoral beauty […] Beet, Maize & Corn is a dramatic reinvention of the High Llamas; anyone who had written them off as a one-trick pony had better get working on a new edition because that book is dead wrong.”