 | Villagers |
Villagers is largely the work of lead singer/guitarist Conor O’Brien and this is their debut album titled Becoming a Jackal. I have to admit that upon first listen of this album, I did not really love it all that much. The album has a slow meandering quality to it that has a tough time grabbing you the first way through. But on each repeated listen it became more and more unforgettable and better and better and the layers of the soft subtlety of the songs begin to peel away and you are left with some terrific stuff. This is certainly a very impressive debut from O’Brien and he shows he has songwriting and talent that will surely carry him forward for a long time to come. You can tell his rare kind of talent throughout the 11 songs on this album, and not really any one of them is a misstep. Each has its own dark and brooding sense of time and place, but he paints the picture beautifully and it makes for a great listen from start to finish.
The style of the songs here are largely in a kind of softer, subtler folk style without a lot of the American folk conventions (beards, mountains, fiddles), and more closely falls along the lines of someone like Sondre Lerche in many respects. There are smart, subtle and twists in the lyrics throughout and it is a complexity and weight to the songs that are quite impressive. Just having heard them multiple times songs like “Ship of Promises”, “Home” and “Pieces” all are interminably stuck in my head and in my musical consciousness. The songs may be a little dark and a little obscure, and the tone of the record is pretty consistent and unchanging, but still these songs have these little hooks and valleys in them that make them really jump out at you once you get deep into them on multiple listens. He has a talent for making this stuff work the way that few do and this is a very impressive display of memorable songwriting for such a young and unknown artist.
The drawbacks of the album are really that it is fairly slow and plodding in many ways, and there isn’t really any levity to speak of in here in a general sense, but I think where initially that may be a turn off, once you get into this record and start really listening to it, you can hear the details going on in these songs and they just work so well together. I think he described his sound as dark imagery and feelings around mundane everyday things, and that is certainly right on (“27 Strangers” comes to mind for sure). It may be a bit dark, but it is done in such an intriguing and thoughtful way that I don’t think it detracts from the album being a really, really good album.
These songs are largely very softly spoken and subtle modern folk songs, but done with a sense of weight and darkness that really gives these songs some feeling. Even upon many listens of the record I am having a hard time really finding parts where he has gone wrong here, and there are few if any. It is a record that stands up incredibly well and one that you may need to sit and simmer with a bit, but the payoff will be worth it. These are some of the most memorable lines and hooks in music so far this year, especially in this sometimes cookie-cutter softer indie-pop/rock genre, and O’Brien has shown he is a real talent and we should definitely keep our eyes on where he is going next. A very impressive debut from this Irish singer/songwriter.
