While it’s probably clichéd to use that reliable old ‘difficult second album’ chestnut when reviewing the sophomore efforts of artists who’ve released successful debuts, it can surely be excused in this case. Certainly it’s safe to say that Conor J. O’Brien – the massively talented singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and wide-eyed cherub behind Villagers – felt under a serious amount of pressure when it came to recording {Awayland}. Why else would he have put braces around its title?
Seriously, the 29-year-old Dubliner had a tough act to follow. Although sales of Villagers’ startlingly original 2010 debut, Becoming A Jackal, were less voluminous than it truly deserved, it still hit the top spot in Ireland, was ecstatically reviewed, nominated for the Mercury Prize, and bagged him an Ivor Novello (for the title track). It also earned him the slack-jawed envy and admiration of most of his musical contemporaries. As one well-known Irish indie player jokingly commented to me, “Could he not have at least one fucking dud song?”
Of course, while all of this acclaim meant that expectations would be intimidatingly high, one suspects that O’Brien’s own demands of himself were even higher. He’s known to be a total perfectionist, the kind of control freak who ultimately needs to have the masters prised from his white-knuckled grasp. As with Jackal, this album was produced and mixed at Attica Audio in Donegal by O’Brien and Villagers’ guitarist Tommy McLaughlin. While the band – fine musicians all – thought they were finished after five weeks, their front man reportedly kept on returning to studio to further fine-tune these 11 fine tunes (even after the first advance copies had been sent out by Domino).
Such single-minded devotion to his art is evident throughout {Awayland}. O’Brien changed his working methods this time out, beginning with the music rather than the lyrics. While it’s ostensibly a highly polished pop record, {Awayland} stretches epically across a sonic spectrum that takes in rock, folk, electronica and the stuff of Broadway musicals. There’s a hell of a lot going on: keyboards, samplers, organs, brass, strings, congas and marimbas are utilised in tandem with the more standard guitars, drums and bass.
They may have come last but, lyrically, it’s often a wordy and literate affair, packed full of vividly poetic imagery, like: “I was carving my name out of a giant Sequoia tree / I was blind to its beauty / Now it’s all I can see” (‘Passing
A Message’).
O’Brien has previously described Jackal as being his Hermann Hesse record. This time round, he’s citing SF humourist Kurt Vonnegut – most specifically his classic 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five. While Jackal may have been an existential and melancholic piece of work, constantly in search of spiritual meaning, now he’s finding the comedy in the tragedy. Or trying to, at least. While it would be crass to speculate too much on the effect it had on him, it’s worth noting that O’Brien’s younger sister passed away shortly after the release of Villagers’ debut.
There’s a strong strain of melancholia running through most of the songs, and many references to the sea (he grew up in Dún Laoghaire). Although there are occasional big guitars, the album opens quietly with the softly strummed and harmonious ‘My Lighthouse’. “You are needing a friend,” O’Brien croons in his instantly identifiable winsome and falsetto-prone voice. “For to follow, for to fend / And I haven’t got a clue / If I’m getting through to you / My lighthouse.”
Midway through the same song, he’s singing, “And we’ll beat the ghost with our bare hands / And we’ll skin the corpse and we’ll love and laugh,” before bemoaning, “the funny little flaws in this earthly design.”
The Vonnegut influence is most evident on the picaresque ‘Earthly Pleasure’. The song opens with the narrator: “Naked on the toilet with a toothbrush in his mouth / When he suddenly acquired an overwhelming sense of doubt.” Next thing you know, he’s travelled back in time to the Brazilian War of Independence. “Then suddenly he found himself in 1822 / And he was in another body, in a heavy sort of suit / He was surrounded but he’d started making plans to make a run / When they called to him, ‘Son, cock your gun!”
Stylistically there are so many subtle segues that it’s hard to pin down, but there are standout moments of pure pop perfection. The relatively straightforward ‘Nothing Arrived’ sounds like Reveal-era REM. With its bleeping Morse-code intro, ‘The Waves’ – which infuriated some Villagers fans in a Dylan/Judas kind of way when it was leaked online – has an underlying tone of menace before soaring into a tsunami of great beauty. The title track, meanwhile, is a lush and
dreamy instrumental.
The quirky closing song ‘Rhythm Composer’ – written from the perspective of a Rowland keyboard – fades out with the braying of a donkey. If O’Brien was making the point that he’s no one-trick-pony, there was really no need. As artful, poetic, inventive and thought-provoking an album as we’re likely to hear in 2013, {Awayland} is indisputably a masterpiece.