Villagers

Villagers is coming back to LantarenVenster! More than two years after the previous concert, the Irish indie folk band of singer-songwriter Conor O'Brien will present the music from the new album That Golden Time to the Rotterdam fans on May 29. The album will be released in early May.

O'Brien is a man with a remarkable talent for writing introspective songs. With Villagers he makes inventive, incisive folk pop, often intimate and narrative. Almost fifteen years ago, Villagers was born with Becoming A Jackal, an album full of acoustic folk songs about myths and magic. Conor has now broadened his horizons and completely reinvented Villagers: a soulful, layered sound was combined with accessible melodies. Suddenly he also made spiritual jazz, worked with a flutist and used samples of gospel and soul legends such as The Dixie Hummingbirds and Donnie Hathaway.

The current pandemic has made escapism a much-needed activity, and the music on previous album Fever Dreams has this enchanting effect. As with the very best albums, the record becomes a means of transport; the music picks you up and puts you somewhere else. O'Brien: “I had an urge to write something that was as generous to the listener as it was to myself. Sometimes the most delirious states can produce the most ecstatic, euphoric and escapist dreams.”

They are songs with the strange, fused shapes and magical ambivalence of dreams. The meaning of the songs is both mysterious and clear as day. O'Brien further expanded his music. Inspiration came from night swimming on a Dutch island to Flann O'Brien, Audre Lorde, David Lynch and LS Lowry through the music of Piero Umiliani and Alessandro Alessandroni and the jazz of Duke Ellington and Alice Coltrane. And in the meantime, O'Brien retained the space that has always characterized Villagers, which ensures that the smallest details in his music sometimes hit the hardest. We look forward with great anticipation to the new album to be released in May 2024. What paths will O'Brien take there?