From Jools to jackals, Mercury to magazine lists, 2010 has left Conor O’Brien’s Villagers in very good shape.
By now, a healthy portion of the Irish population is worshipping at the altar of O’Brien, but when you consider that Villagers have been performing regularly on home shores for nigh-on two years now, it’s curious that’s it’s taken this long for him to feel the love. If you ask me (and this is my review, so you did…), the slight lag in public affections comes down to this: it’s difficult to make fans when you make quiet music. Irish audiences are chatty to rowdy by default, and a venue full of merriment-makers doesn’t always lend itself to the kind of intimate soul-baring that Villagers do so well.
A year ago, a performance for O’Brien meant shushing the crowd and asking tipsy punters to hold off on their banter. Nowadays, he has 1,500 others to do the shushing for him.
He enters the stage alone, and seizing his trusty duck-taped guitar, hums the delicate opening to ‘27 Strangers’ to total hush. Things take a more boisterous turn next, as fellow Villagers Cormac Curran (keys), James Byrne (drums), Danny Snow (bass) and Tommy McLoughlin (guitar) enter stage left, and transform seasoned favorites like ‘I Saw The Dead’ and ‘Becoming A Jackal’ from quietly eerie ballads to full-on spook rock. There’s real fire in the belly tonight – O’Brien even howls out the last notes of the triumphant ‘Ship Of Promises’ on his knees.
Our host’s in particularly playful form – he revels in poking gentle fun at his lyrics, his band mates and even himself (after accidentally whacking his set list with his foot, he whispers a perfectly-timed: “That kind of killed the moment...”).
‘Home’ and ‘Pieces’ from the Mercury-nominated Becoming A Jackal confirm O’Brien’s status as a true lothario of the heartstrings, but it’s new song ‘Memoir’ that casts the greatest spell, with lines like “So I gave myself to strangers/ Like I gave myself to you” and “I might as well be anyone at all” inducing palpable chills.
In Vicar Street tonight, whether we’re 27 strangers, or 1,500, it seems we’re all feeling the same thing: like the only person in the room.