Urban renewal
Villagers frontman Conor O’Brien has found a new voice from the city streets where he now lives
No one would ever accuse Villagers of being an ‘Urban’ act but there is a definite groove to the Irish act’s fourth album The Art Of Pretending To Swim. Perhaps it’s because main man Conor O’Brien has swapped rural north county Dublin for Camden Street in trendy Dublin 8 where he has been living for the past couple of years. There, he can see all manner of people that provoke a lyric or a full-blown story for a song.
‘I used to live outside Malahide and I would come in to town, see bands and just come back on the bus,’ he says. ‘Now I’m pretty much in the centre of things… much more to see and hear.’
The night clubs of Harcourt Street run parallel to the cooler venues of Wexford Street and Aungier Street and we meet to talk in the Lucky Duck, yet another addition to the night life of An Boom Nua era Dublin. The album, he says riffs on technology, faith and the revelation that he is not afraid to write pop songs now.
‘I wanted to write pop songs insofar as I can write what might be considered pop songs,’ he says.
‘Fool (the current and very approachable single) for example could have been a sprawling 10 minutes long song but I made it short, concise and one that fits into the realm of a pop song. I’m glad I did and not try instead to be like Bob Dylan again.’
After two Ivor Novello awards, a Choice Music prize and three No.1 albums, he feels confident in doing exactly what he wants.
‘I don’t have to adhere to any structures. It’s like applying a squeegee to your third eye,’ he says. ‘The title The Art Of Pretending To Swim reflects my idea of life. It’s about makbeen ing it up as you go along. It’s my idea of faith, which is that it is a creative action; it’s nothing to do with something organised or preordained. I enjoyed using words like “God” which I would usually shy away from but I’m reclaiming them for myself.’
He professes to see the creative act as something that he will never understand but found it helpful this time to see it as something outside of himself.
‘There is a still a lot of graft though,’ he says. ‘Songs might come after a week of looking at a blank page. I will distract myself, by making an (audio) loop and then I find I have written some words and I just go ‘ah-ha!’ then drink a bottle of wine and write the rest of the song.’ The 34-yearold, recently shorn of the almost de rigueur beard that he wore for three years, has been busy with extracurricular activities too.
On the live front you can occasionally catch him with fellow Malahide man James Vincent McMorrow in the band Seen Your Video, playing songs by American band The Replacements, usually at gigs benefiting Women’s Aid.
He has written Movin’ On, a song on Paul Weller’s upcoming album True Meanings. He has also asked to curate a night at this year’s Metropolis Festival in the RDS. ‘I’m half way through that process and I’ve learned I really wouldn’t want to be a promoter,’ he says of his contribution.
‘We’re playing at the end of that night which is great but there is a fair bit of stress that goes with trying to put on a bill of bands that you really want people to see.’
By comparison, he didn’t find writing the lyrics for a song to be recorded by Weller, one of his heroes, particularly stressful at all. ‘I found it easy because I would have known all the songs from his (1995) Stanley Road album, I think I was 13 when it came out and it was when I really began to engage with music,’ he says
‘It was quite natural for me to write something appropriate to him whereas with other people I might have to think about it more.
‘I also did a remix of Paul’s song She Moves With The Fayre and that was a real exercise in production for me. The amount that I learned in the week – nerdy things about frequencies and drums – really fed into what I did on The Art Of Pretending To Swim.’
Villagers – The Art Of Pretending To Swim is out on September 21. Villagers play The Metropolis Festival at the RDS on October 27.
‘I’m pretty much in the centre of things… much more to see and hear’