VILLAGERS

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“Step into the soul serene,” beckons lead singer Conor O’Brien in a line that concisely captures the melodic tone of Villagers’ new record, Darling Arithmetic. Formed seven years ago, Villagers broke into the scene in 2010 when their début record Becoming a Jackal was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. With each ensuing release, the indie-folk band from Dublin reaffirmed their critical acclaim, and this latest effort is no deviation. Having recently returned from Los Angeles, O’Brien describes how he has brought the West Coast lifestyle back to Dublin: “I got a haircut [this morning],” he jokes. But really he is just modestly covering up the fact that his days are filled with bright lights, festivals, and the vast, exciting road stretching out ahead. “We’re touring quite a bit, back and forth with European festivals and then back to America again. Having a week on, a couple days off and then a week on and then towards the second half of the year we’re going to do another big long run,” he explains. “It’s pretty ongoing.” But even with this dense schedule, he and the band have still found time to explore. “We had a day off in San Francisco, got to Golden Gate Park,” he recalls, “experienced the whole Haight Street area, the original kind of hippiedom in San Francisco, which was cool.”

It is clear that this new record has taken a different approach than previous ones. O’Brien wrote, recorded, produced, and mixed the album himself, and in doing so spawned an intensely personal and intimate album that differs from the more energetic, indie-influenced outings of the past. The songs consist of barely more than the loose ring of the acoustic guitar vibrating under intermittent, quivering vocals, creating an enchantingly naked version of Villagers. There are points during this album when the echoing vocals, reverberating acoustic guitar, and swooning synth merge into something entirely consoling, like someone you love dearly cuddling you after you’ve just burst the water pipes in your eyes. The melancholy is distinct, but there is something completely reassuring and hopeful in its message. When you listen to this album and allow the music to conjure up wildly random images, the sunny haven of San Francisco is one that can certainly be ascribed to a few songs on Darling Arithmetic. However, the golden beaches of the Bay are far from the murky streets of Dublin, and, despite Ireland being O’Brien’s root, he confesses a rocky relationship to his homeland. “It’s kind of complicated, because I feel like the Irish identity is ever changing and ever evolving and my levels of attachment are based on where I am in my life,” he explains. “I definitely didn’t grow up in pubs, singing old Irish ballads. I was much more of an urban kid in terms of being into rock music, so I wasn’t your archetypal Irish kid.”

A large part of this turbulent relationship is put down to the country’s hostility toward homosexuals in his formative years. “It was weird because I didn’t enjoy growing up gay in Ireland,” O’Brien says. “It wasn’t very fun, you felt quite repressed. But things have changed so much in the last few years that I actually feel some sort of access to a pride in my own country. It’s changing my whole social world when I travel.” Things have changed so much, in fact, that this past May, Ireland became the first nation to legalize same-sex marriage by referendum, just a month before the Supreme Court declared it legal across all fifty states in America.

O’Brien’s personal history comes through clearly throughout the album. “Hot Scary Summer” is an especially unique and beautiful song, which follows a young homosexual and his belittling need to hide the truth in self-preservation. One line juts out above the rest and is an example of the subtle, sharp poetry that pervades the record: “All the pretty young homophobes, looking out for a fight, we got good at pretending and then pretending got us good.” When asked to clarify a slight paradox between an attraction to these young men and a simultaneous natural repugnance to their ideology, O’Brien points to the trope of hiding behind his own humor. He explains, “I was just trying to be cheeky. For me, a lot of writing is therapy. I think if I’m able to make a little bit of a joke, to make light of something which I’ve been affected by in a much darker way, I feel the song is doing something important for me. I think that ‘pretty young homophobes’ line is just my way of making a little jibe back.”

The album tackles chilling loss and the shrouding of one’s true self, and even the title itself bursts with metaphorical charge. “‘Darling Arithmetic’ was a song I had for a couple years actually and just sang it to myself a lot,” O’Brien says. “It was a song I’d written for myself very much as therapy, about losing someone, someone dying. It’s a very heavy song for me, but then when I started writing these new songs which ended up on the album I realized that the song finally had a home. They’re all really delicate love songs, and so is this one, and so it became the centerpiece to the album for me. The phrase ‘Darling Arithmetic’ was my way of writing the person’s name in. [The cadence] flowed really nicely. It just felt really weird to put something that was quite old and mathematical and really far away from all the feelings of the songs.”

The young Irish heart sings of a “courage in harmony with something other than your ego” where “nothing comes for free.” These are the words of someone who has been through his share of affliction, but is not defeated. The album is a fantastic achievement of man and voice. There are tunes that will get lodged in your mind and spark an incipient fondness that will endure weeks, nay, months of joy. As for the immediate future of Villagers, O’Brien and his band have been on an extensive summer festival schedule of late, playing a slate of shows across the United Kingdom and Europe, and then it’s off to America for a line of shows. The swelling schedule is symbolic of their deserved demand and serves to pay homage to their snowballing maturity and talent.

Darling Arithmetic is out now. Villagers plays the Amsterdam Woods Festival this Sunday.