Villagers: rhythm as therapy

Last autumn, Villagers all but played main act Grizzly Bear off the stage at the AB. This week, the Irish indie band fronted by Conor J. O’Brien is getting all the attention at the Botanique.

“I wanted to terrify you,” Conor J. O’Brien laughs about “The Waves”, the electronica-infused single that announced the succulent Awayland, Villagers’s second album, which was released earlier this year. O’Brien wrote the song after he saw footage of the tsunami in Japan, expressing his reflections on futility, but also on nature’s grandeur. “I wanted to blend something horrific like that with the sense of amazement.”
On his three year old debut Becoming a Jackal, the Irish song bard provided dark folk with the energy of Arcade Fire. O’Brien still gladly embraces the image of the lonely singer-songwriter who pours his heart out, but in the run-up to Awayland, he found himself bored with acoustic thrumming. While visiting a friend in Berlin, he explored the night life and discovered the power of techno. “The emotions mechanical music like that awakens are fantastic,” the 29-year-old songwriter says. “Dancing mobs pulse with enormous energy.” He started experimenting with drum computers and got influenced by kraut rhythms, raw techno, the musical landscapes of Jean-Claude Vannier, and electro wizards like Flying Lotus and Caribou. Electro is not definitive on Awayland, but it does add extra texture and pop tones. O’Brien varies more nimbly than before between small and explosive, light and dark, lullaby and lunacy, all gelled together with his innocent, boyish voice.

Words can be poison
While Villagers’s debut was a disguised solo album on which O’Brien played all the instruments, Awayland is really a group album. “We jammed a lot, prioritising the physical, and looking for the groove. We want to create music for journeys. [Smiles] Initially, words were less important, and only served the music.” Is that why the title track is instrumental? “For a long time, I wrestled with whether to write words to the chords of that track, but after a while I gave up. Then I started realising that that bit of fingerpicking was very expressive without lyrics. Words can poison music. Now, the little song expresses a kind of childlike amazement at the world, in a very pure way.”
The little boy on the cover of Awayland is O’Brien’s nephew Patrick. He symbolises the uninhibitedness and the freedom of thought we gradually lose as we get older and more cynical. “I’ve had a lot of ups and downs since the last album, but I’d had enough of wallowing in lamentation,” O’Brien says. “This record had to be invigorating; joyful music you can move to. Hence the colourful artwork, the electronica. [Little cough] Let’s just say, rhythm as therapy.”
Where is Awayland to be situated? “I think it is primarily a state of mind. A personal sanctuary, a haven of secular spirituality one can return to. Hippie shit.” [Laughs]

Villagers • 5/3, 19.30, SOLD OUT!, Botanique, Koningsstraat 236 rue Royale, Sint-Joost-ten-Node/Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, 02-218.37.32, info@botanique.be, www.botanique.be