VILLAGERS’ LIFE
VILLAGERS FRONTMAN CONOR O’BRIEN TELLS DAVE FREAK
TALK about perfect timing. The day lockdown hit was the same day that Irish combo Villagers completed the main recording sessions for their fifth album, Fever Dreams. ‘It’s true. The full band recordings were all done. Then, on the last day we were booked into the studio, it was the first day of lockdown,’ recalls Villagers frontman, Conor O’Brien.
Though the full band was no longer needed, there was still work to be done, leaving Conor to disappear to his apartment to polish off the tracks.
‘Lockdown came at the exact moment I locked myself down,’ he says. ‘All the human stuff was done, really, apart from a few bits like the song Full Faith In Providence, which I did on my own; lockdown was spent refining and adding things like brass, and strings, by email and remote working.’
Though the songwriter/musician was fully aware of the drama unravelling in the outside world, the enforced isolation was just what he needed to finish the project.
‘I usually obsessively need solitude – I need to be away from people, I really savour it. I love working with the band, it’s one of my favourite things in the world, but I have to work on my own, refining, working things out in my head, as well as working with these amazing players.
‘It was a really creative time,’ he continues. ‘I found myself returning to long-form literature – that nurtures the brain. Instead of living in a screen, it gives you pause for thought. I could go back to thinking like [I did] before I had social media on my phone.
‘I’m actually in the middle of cleansing my relationship with the internet,’ he explains. ‘I’ve been unfollowing people on Twitter. I’ll just be using social media to promote my music, or if there’s anything useful or interesting for people, I’ll put that up. But there’ll be no constant checking; I’ll just use it as a tool.’
Recalling how he’d once reach for his phone at every opportunity, Conor adds: ‘When we were touring, years ago, and Twitter was still relatively new, you would check it to see what people were saying as soon as you finished a gig.
‘That’s not good for your mental health, it destroys your self-esteem, seeing your worth based on 140
HOW THE SOLITUDE OF LOCKDOWN HELPED HIM GET CREATIVE
characters, or whatever Twitter’s limit is. So I’m much more wary of it now.’
Using his newfound time productively, the songwriter – whose first two albums, Being A Jackal and Awayland, were both nominated for the Mercury Prize – relishes trading digital screens for the printed page.
‘Reading books is nourishing me – paper books, actual books! I’m making sure I do it every day. I was starting to think about it a lot when we were making Fever Dreams – I love this thing, literature, and how we’re all super-complicated weirdos wandering the world. The internet turns everything into binary, into zeros and ones, and I want to get away from that binary thinking.
‘I’ve been reading a lot of stuff: The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir is one of my favourite books, even though it’s extremely complicated. Every single page, I find myself hopping onto Google – which I know is a total contradiction,’ he laughs. ‘But at least I’m going onto the internet for an actual reason! It’s a landmark text.’
Released at the end of August, Villagers’ layered, warm and expansive Fever Dreams initially started life under a different name. ‘The working title was The More I Know, The More I Care, which ended up as a mantra that repeats itself in various different songs in the album. But I didn’t feel it was strong enough.
‘Another title I considered was Pictures Of The Floating World, which is a literal translation of ‘Ukiyo-e’, as I was obsessed with [Japanese artist] Hokusai’s Ukiyo-e Edo woodcut prints. I imagined the album to be a musical version of how seeing those prints made me feel.
‘But then, at the last minute, I realised that Fever Dreams was the central song – that goes deep into the subconscious of the album. So, Fever Dreams became the name.’
Coincidentally, it’s also the title of the forthcoming long-player by guitarist Johnny Marr (whose Fever Dreams Parts 1-4 is due soon).
‘Great minds, eh?’ Conor laughs. ‘I actually think that’s really cool – there must be something in the collective consciousness that we’re all drawing on. I met Johnny Marr once before, and he was very, very nice, so that doesn’t bother me. I like it!’
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