Villagers: "We're all coming from a viewpoint of moral purity at the moment – which I think is very dangerous, because it just creates more and more division"

It shouldn’t come as a major surprise that Conor O’Brien has always been, by his own admission, a “solo traveller”. Although Villagers are, at their core, a band, the Dublin artist has been the primary creative force behind the project from the get-go – only learning in more recent years to give up some degree of control, and start fully “trusting” his bandmates to “feel” and “interpret” his songs, he tells me.

“I’m a very bad team-player,” he resumes. “I’m just not able to understand rules, when it comes to more than three people. I’m a bit of a space cadet, and I live in my own head.

“But it’s nice now, to fall on something which is more group-based,” he adds. “Because when I was controlling it too much, I was missing out on a whole world of playing with musicians. And that’s what it’s all about now.”

It’s an artistic evolution that the band have carried from their fifth album, 2021’s dazzlingly delirious Fever Dreams, into their brand new LP, That Golden Time. Of course, Villagers hadn’t been doing too badly before those releases – having scored, over the course of a decade or so, two Ivor Novello Awards, a Choice Music Prize, two Mercury Prize nominations, hundreds of millions of streams, and notable appearances on the soundtracks to major series like Normal People and Big Little Lies.

But recent years have triggered a new direction for Villagers – not just in terms of the collaborative spirit Conor’s been embracing, and a more experimental, expansive approach to instrumentation, but also in the subject matter of the work. Both Fever Dreams and That Golden Time have been informed by an attempt to prioritise humanity above the hollowness and “insidiousness” of the Internet Age.

Where the previous album responded to such topics with dream-like escapism, however, That Golden Time finds Conor engaging increasingly with realism.

“The last album was trying to do Danny Elfman, Edward Scissorshands soundtrack stuff – and this is more like a Ken Loach film,” Conor laughs. “I found a very interesting tension on this record, between having an idealist view on things, and the harsh reality of the world.

“The world has changed so much in the last ten years,” he continues. “The Internet has made people dream differently. It’s spiritual, the effects that it’s having on people.”

He’s not the first person in the world to be wary about “the Internet destroying our brains,” but Conor’s approach to the subject is compellingly nuanced, and inherently compassionate. As he points out, it’s extremely fertile ground to be exploring as a creative – especially when you consider that, “right now, we’re only at the beginning of this massive shift in society.”

“Even if you tweet about war or something, you’re still tweeting from a phone that was made from child labour in the Congo,” he says. “Everyone’s complicit. But we’re all coming from a viewpoint of moral purity at the moment – which I think is very dangerous, because it just creates more and more division, and less empathy. You’re seeing it even amongst the most progressive people.”

Those concerns, and concerns about late capitalism in general, are explored throughout That Golden Time.

“In the absence of an all-encompassing religion or church, I think it’s actually made people think that they’re God instead,” Conor reckons. “Everyone’s worshipping themselves. There’s a new form of narcissism appearing, and I find that really interesting to write about.”

Of course, Conor understands that the bad rap organised religion gets these days is usually more than warranted. But he reveals, somewhat surprisingly, that he’s recently become “quite obsessed with the idea of original sin” – a term defined in the Catholic Encyclopedia as ‘the hereditary stain’ with which we’re all born.

“That was a big part of my thinking when I was making this album,” Conor elaborates. “This sense that we’re all tainted human beings to some degree  – it’s almost the antithesis of what we’re going through right now. Obviously it’s complicated, but I think it can actually be quite a helpful thing. It gets rid of a lot of sanctimoniousness in people’s conversations, and it brings you all together a little bit more.”

Has religion always been a part of his life?

“When I was younger, I felt really, really close to God,” he recalls. “I used to pray all the time. Before bed, I’d name everyone I knew, and pray for them. And then I hit my teens, and I was like, ‘Give me Kurt Cobain! Aghh, I hate the world!’ Nihilism kicked in – and I think there’s a lot of value in that as well. But I’ve sort of come full circle.

“Ideas, for reasons of social cohesion, are my focus now,” he continues. “And there’s a lot of value in religion. It’s like that Dylan song, ‘Gotta Serve Somebody’. No matter what you’re doing, you’re worshipping something – and most of the time these days, you’re just worshipping the marketplace, or money, or that little black mirror in your hand.”

Villagers. Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

That Golden Time, he tells me, is probably his most vulnerable album to date – and despite the 14 years between them, he can see “links” between it and the first Villagers record, Becoming A Jackal.

“I would write a lot of the words in a frenzy, and then I would finish and go, ‘I can’t sing that. That’s not for the world,’” he reflects. “But then I would think, ‘Well, that’s authentic – that’s what I felt.’ So I just put it out there. But even singing these songs with the guys these last few weeks, when we were rehearsing for the first time, felt quite vulnerable. Some of those words are quite raw.”

The new album is also, despite the thematic similarities, a turn away from the epic blast of positive energy and psychedelic hues of Fever Dreams.

“I wanted the voice to sound like when you’re underwater – that sound where it’s almost like you’re in the womb or something,” he says. “Or inside your head, like ASMR. I wanted to mix that cinematic epicness with that intimate, guy-with-an-acoustic-guitar, whispering-in-your-ear thing. I wanted to place those things beside each other, and see how that friction would play. And it didn’t go well for about 90% of the time! There was a lot of failure, making this album, and I had to throw away a lot of stuff. You’re seeing about 10% of the work.”

Despite the heaviness of some of the themes explored, The Golden Time is also, overall, a captivatingly hopeful listening experience.

“The least hopeful music, for me, is music that doesn’t dig in deep,” Conor considers. “Music that’s made for money, or music that’s made to get on playlists and stuff. That’s not hopeful. Creating anything that you’ve really put your heart and soul into – which is what I’ve done here – is hopeful, in my mind. Even if it’s going into the darker sides of things.”

The last time we spoke, in 2021, Conor told me that he was getting heavily into meditating.

“I gave that up!” he laughs. “At the time, I was reading lots of Alan Watts, and doing hour-long meditations. It might have been a Covid, locked-in-your-apartment thing. But I tend to get really obsessed with things for a while, and then suddenly I’ve used it up. I’m like, ‘Next thing!’ Which is annoying. I think I grew up watching too much TV, so I don’t have the attention span for it!

“But I’ve stopped drinking this year, and started going to the gym a lot,” he continues. “So that’s my new meditation. And I feel really good. I’m going to try and do that longer than I meditated!”

The sense of clarity he’s found through those lifestyle changes, including his newfound love of sea-swimming, has been hugely beneficial to his mental health, he says.

“I went kind of crazy during Covid,” he resumes. “I was drinking a lot of wine, and I was overly online. Not to go on about not drinking – but it has changed my life a bit.

“I spent most of the Villagers years just drinking a little bit too much, and partying a bit too much,” he adds. “Which is great – you can do that when you’re young. But I’ve come through that all now. Now, I’m all about getting up early in the morning, having energy, and seeing the sunlight. And being available – mentally, socially, psychologically and spiritually.”

Conor has always stayed deeply clued into the Irish scene, raving about the likes of Search Results, Thee U.F.O., and Rachael Lavelle over the course of our conversation. But That Golden Time finds him teaming up with an act whose legacy stretches much further back into the Irish music landscape: enlisting the talents of Dónal Lunny on bouzouki.

His first proper meeting with the renowned musician was for the star-studded Ceiliúradh show at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 2014, which marked the first state visit of a President of Ireland – Michael D. Higgins – to the UK. Dónal was leading the house band for the celebration.

“I got to sing ‘Shipbuilding’ with Elvis Costello that night, which was just incredible,” Conor recalls. “But I remember being extremely shy at that event. The rehearsals were me in front of 15 players, and I was still relatively new to the whole thing. I couldn’t even remember what the chords in my song were. But Dónal was like my voice in those rehearsals. He was the one guy who was really comforting to me, and he translated what I wanted to everyone else.

“I really feel like I connect with something, when I play with him,” Conor continues. “His rhythm is just phenomenal. Everything you hear him perform on this album is his first take.”

Earlier this year, Villagers celebrated another phenomenal force in Irish music – with a performance of Sinéad O’Connor’s ‘Black Boys On Mopeds’, in tribute to the late singer-songwriter, on the Virgin Media series Uprising, produced in association with Hot Press.

“It was sort of surreal when she died, because she was just always there, part of the cultural landscape,” Conor reflects. “It was like, ‘How could that happen?’ She was a huge part of the tapestry of Ireland, and she still is. Such an unwavering, authentic voice.”

“We ended up singing together a couple of times over the years, like at the Olympia with John Grant,” he continues. “I also met her in London, and we did a radio show with Clive Anderson. I remember singing ‘Nothing Arrived’ and she was sitting three feet away from me, just watching. It was quite nerve-wracking, but it felt good.

“She probably sensed I was a bit nervous around her, but she was always very nice to me,” he adds. “I remember her once saying to me, ‘There needs to be more of a community of musicians in Dublin. We should all be getting together and jamming all the time.’ She always had that idealistic verve in her.”

Both artists also grew up in the southside suburb of Glenageary, near Dun Laoghaire.

“I never saw her as a kid, but I used to see The Edge now and then,” Conor tells me. “He’d be driving from Dalkey. I remember the day my dog died, I was like 12, and I was walking across the road to get some ice cream. And The Edge was in his car, like, ‘Go on, go on!’ And I was just crying, looking at The Edge, walking across the road…”

That strangely specific childhood trauma aside, the area remains close to Conor’s heart.

“As I get older, and the more I travel, the more I love going back there, and visiting my folks,” he says. “It’s so close to the sea, and I’m obsessed with sea-swimming these days. I’m trying to become one of those old lads who do it on Christmas day. That’s my aim in life!”

It’s also a just a 30-minute DART journey to Trinity College Dublin, where Villagers will be playing their biggest headline show to date this summer.

“Weirdly enough, I feel so ready for it,” Conor reflects. “The songs are sounding great. And by the time we get to Trinity, we’re also going to have toured the hell out of these tunes. So the new stuff is still going to be fresh, but we’ve also revamped some of the older songs, and a bunch of songs we haven’t played for years. I’ve actually never been to a gig in Trinity, so I’m just buzzing for it.”

But even as he focuses on getting the new album tracks gig-ready, Conor reveals that he’s “always writing.”

“Writing is always stressful and strange,” he admits. “I love it, but most of the time, I feel inadequate. Whenever I say that I’m writing, it sounds like I’m being creative. But to me, it’s almost like saying, ‘I’m trying to dig a hole at the moment – and I’m very tired and my back is breaking, and no one’s paying me, and I feel like I want to go to bed.’

“So I don’t know why I keep doing it!” he laughs. “But I’ve had a few successes recently – and they’re sounding quite different…”

• That Golden Time is out now. Villagers play Trinity College Dublin on Saturday, June 29. Other acts playing the Trinity include Jane’s Addiction (June 28); AIR (30); Elbow (July 1); Manic Street Preachers & Suede (2); Gavin James (3); and Paul Weller (4).