This week I've been listening, almost exclusively, to Villagers. Villagers are a band from Dublin but really they're just Conor O'Brien. When I first heard (let's call them) him supporting Wild Beasts in Galway I thought he was pretty good. Then I got the record and I thought it was merely decent. Someone told me it was a bit patchy so I figgered that it must be a bit patchy. Like so many others this record was destined for THE PILE. I caught the start of his set at Latitude and left, not due to ambivalence but, because the kids were hungry again. I think I have a tendency to assume that stuff, and not just music, is going to turn out average. Most stuff really does.
But I was wrong about this. A week's immersion has shown that the record isn't patchy. It's damn close to perfect. It's really got under my skin and, in the words of Elbow's Guy Garvey, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. Conor O'Brien strikes me as a very serious, poetic young man. I heard him play live on the radio last night and he's already deconstructing, simplifying the form of his songs. Letting the poetry out.
Another serious, poetic young Irishman had the supreme confidence to do this at a similar age back in the early seventies. I'm talking about Van Morrison. And that's not just by way of shoehorning a clever reference to title of this 'piece'. Honest it isn't.
Here he is on Other Voices.
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