Conor O’Brien of Villagers: ‘We see extreme tribalistic thinking from all sides’

Conor O’Brien, the one-man company behind Villagers, thinks about it a lot. “It’s absolutely crazy what we’re going through,” he says. “The history books will show the damage the Internet age has done to our intellect and our ability to communicate, but also to our ability to dream and have imaginative worlds within ourselves.

“All of that is currently under attack to some extent. It’s not all negative, but I do think it’s fertile ground for me when it comes to songwriting.”

Such thoughts fuel Villagers’ new album, That golden time, which will be released next week. “In the absence of church attendance and religious pursuits,” O’Brien argues, “we worship the market instead. We worship ourselves, we worship our identity, we worship what separates us. That is converted into money and sold back to us.”

Much of his thoughts focus on social media and there’s a catchy line in the title track about ‘algorithm blues’ and ‘dulling the mind’.

“I can’t stop thinking about all those things,” he says. “And maybe it’s just getting older. But I feel like it doesn’t allow us to put things in context. Personally, I’ve retreated from social media – I only use it to promote the work of my Villagers – but during Covid I drank a lot of wine, posted all kinds of opinions and got into arguments. And you know what? So much time is wasted. You could read a book. You can go outside, touch grass, or just communicate with people the old-fashioned way.”

He pauses to think. “For a while we were all pretty drunk on this thing. If you think about it, we are only at the beginning of this Internet age, but we are already seeing extremely tribalistic, simplistic thinking from all sides of all arguments.”

What O’Brien says next will probably set some people on fire if taken out of context, but over the course of a long conversation he fully explains himself. “I absolutely hate it when people still wear the Repeal badge,” he says, referring to an item that seemed to be everywhere in the run-up to the abortion referendum. “I hate it so much because it says, ‘F**k you, you stupid religious people who disagree with me for your own personal reasons.’ I think you have to have a certain amount of respect for the opposing opinion. And I don’t see much of that, especially in the art world.”

Many people in that generally progressive world undoubtedly share O’Brien’s views, although few would feel comfortable voicing them in public. For example, a few hours into our interview I bump into another Irish musician who says (off-record) that they were concerned about last week’s open letter, signed by 400 artists, calling on Irish participant, Bambie Thug, to To boycott the Eurovision Song Contest. “It’s easy to be principled,” this artist told me, “when you’re not the one affected by it. There is a real pressure to queue.”

O’Brien came to public attention in the mid-2000s as a member of acclaimed Dublin band The Immediate. The quartet’s first and only album, In towers and cloudsreceived extremely positive reviews upon its release in 2006, but the band disbanded a year later due to creative differences.

After serving as guitarist for Cathy Davey, he formed his own band, Villagers. Since then, it has had a floating cast of members, but everything revolves around O’Brien. After signing with the respected English label Domino, the first Villagers album, Become a jackalwas released in 2010. It was nominated for both the Mercury and Choice music awards.

Since then, Villagers’ output has been characterized by its quality. That golden time is studio album number six. There is also a nice live recording, Where have you been all my life?with a memorable cover of the evergreen Wichita lineman and was recorded at RAK Studios in London.

O’Brien has put his own stamp on several covers, including, memorably, a live rendition of Abba’s album. Angel eyes with John Grant. One of his fondest pinch-me moments was when he got to sing the great anti-war song Ship-building together with the writer, Elvis Costello, at the Royal Albert Hall in London. “I was really nervous. Donal Lunny played with us and he really reassured me,” he says. “He was such a friendly face and said, ‘Relax, it’s going to be great’.”

Lunny, a veteran of Planxty and Bothy Band, plays his signature bouzouki That golden timewhile American songwriter Peter Broderick contributes violin.

Lately, O’Brien has been going down a Joni Mitchell rabbit hole. “That album with Both sides now am working on it (Clouds). Hejira, at. I can’t stop listening to her stuff because it’s so free. I remember seeing an interview with Dylan where he talked about a stage in his career where the songs just flowed out of him. The same was true for Joni Mitchell. Listen to those albums from the late sixties and seventies and creativity flowed through her veins. She had trouble getting it out fast enough – you can tell by the way the words are put together. It’s like something else was flowing through her and she was just the conduit.

As happy as O’Brien is with the release of That golden timehe admits he’s even more excited about the publication of his debut book later this year: “I think it’s because it’s something new.” Pass a message – which takes its title from a song on Villagers’ second album, Roadland — collects the lyrics of all his songs. It is published by Faber & Faber, whose historical selection includes some of the greatest poets of the 20th and 21st centuries.

O’Brien is particularly stimulated by the fact that Faber published the extensive oeuvre of Seamus Heaney. “(New number) You lucky started when I was watching a documentary about Heaney at my parents’ house at two in the morning. I never realized how prominent he was in the British media during the Troubles. He was constantly on the BBC. Here was a huge figure: an extremely articulate Catholic Irish writer brought over to Britain to do BBC shows.

O’Brien’s songwriting spark was soon ignited. “There must have been such interesting board meetings about that while the violence was going on,” he says. “The song made me try to imagine the strange, complicated conversations that were happening in the corridors of power. And then it became a whole other story about a parasitic kind of person trying to get someone to give up their ethics in the pursuit of material wealth or whatever.”

From the beginning, O’Brien placed considerable emphasis on the quality of his writing. “I’ve been a little precious at times, but I try to make sure they’re good enough before anyone sees them.”

He is in a similarly perfectionist mode while recording. The entire album was recorded in a makeshift studio in his apartment near the center of Dublin and yet there is nothing lo-fi about the overall sound. It’s a testament to remarkable progress in remote recording. “Even the video for You lucky was recorded on my phone and I put it on my laptop,” he says.

He says he can be obsessive when it comes to capturing the exact sound that’s in his head. Of course, that often doesn’t work and after months of tinkering with a song he sometimes falls back on an earlier, freer version. “I don’t know if I’m better at time management when it comes to recording albums,” he says, “but I like it when my manager cracks the whip, when deadlines are imposed.

“There’s always a point, maybe a year and a half later, where phone calls go, ‘So…’ and that focuses my mind.”

‘That Golden Time’ will be released on May 10. Villagers play an outdoor show on June 29 as part of the Trinity Summer Series, Trinity College Dublin.