Villagers to play Seapoint
Villagers’ Conor J O’Brien.
By Kernan Andrews
WHEN VILLAGERS take to the stage of the Seapoint Ballroom in Salthill on Thursday March 14 at 8pm, it will be for one of the most anticipated gigs of the year.
Led by singer-songwriter Conor J O’Brien, the band will perform songs from their latest album {Awayland} as well as from their debut Becoming A Jackal.
While Becoming A Jackal established O’Brien as an exciting singer-songwriter, {Awayland} has seen him expand his sound by incorporating electronic elements into his lyrical, acoustic-rock, sound. It can see songs start quietly but build in intensity, be fragmented, or be supremely melodic yet fade out in an atonal drone.
“I felt like I needed to flip on its head the idea of what music is for myself,” O’Brien said ahead of the album’s release. “I started writing on the acoustic guitar and it sounded terrible, so I began to make musical landscapes, and listened to lots of instrumental music like Lalo Schifrin, David Axelrod and Jean-Claude Vannier, and lots of Krautrock and funk - there is something about the repetition of rhythms that really hit me.”
O’Brien has been nominated for a Mercury Prize, won an Ivor Novello Award, shared the stage with Neil Young, Tindersticks, and Fleet Foxes, and contributed to the A Harbour Of Songs album project curated by The Unthanks pianist/producer Adrian McNally.
The show is a ‘Róisín Dubh presents...’ concert. Tickets are available at www.roisindubh.net, from the Ticket Desk at OMG, Shop Street (formerly Zhivago), and The Róisín Dubh.
