Conor O’Brien’s gradual inching from his acoustic folk roots since 2010’s Mercury-nominated debut Becoming A Jackal is fully realised in his kaleidoscopic fifth studio album. Recorded with a band pre-pandemic, it’s intriguing to wonder how much Fever Dreams morphed into its lysergic final shapes…
Conor O’Brien seems to be living in two worlds. The first is the folky world of his first release in 2010 Becoming A Jackal, the second a more danceable iteration from this years release, The Art of Pretending To Swim.…
The complete and final line up for this year’s Bushstock Festival has been announced. Featured are a handful of already well-established artists, such as Michael Kiwanuka, Lucy Rose, Honeyblood and All We Are, alongside a number of up-and-coming names names. The most recent line up…
After his debut Becoming A Jackal and the harder sounds of Awayland, Conor O’Brien’s latest offering is carefully intimate and stripped-down, recorded in his home studio. Opening song ‘Courage’ is characteristically stoical/masochistic: the knowledge that life is not always easy is framed as ‘sweet relief’.…
For a Villagers fan like myself, getting to not only listen to the new record, Darling Arithmetic, before its release, but to actually talk to the man behind the musical magic, Conor O’Brien, was probably akin to a Game…
Five years after the initial success of debut Becoming a Jackal (2010), Villagers announce a new album to be released this April. Darling Arithmetic, the follow on from 2012’s {Awayland}, will be released by Domino Records on April 13th, 2015. With the band’s first two albums…
Following on from the success of last year’s Mercury Prize-nominated {awayland} Villagers today release a brand new track ‘Occupy Your Mind’, a fast-paced, mildly menacing number written by Conor O’Brien and produced by James Ford (Haim, Arctic Monkeys).
We first saw Villagers at Bestival in 2010, and they were visceral then, all howling and catharsis, but they’ve got a bigger range in their sound now, and the personal feels more political. There are strong electronic beats, LOUD guitars…
If 2012 was a ‘meh’ year of some good British records and nice debuts by a handful of promising artists, 2013 will be forced to do better, not only because there’s no massive international event to distract us (yes Olympics,…
Emmy The Great has been added to the line-up for the Truck Festival, which will already feature The Temper Trap, Mystery Jets, Villagers, and The Low Anthem among many others. Emmy, who played at Hill Farm in 2008 and 2006,…