Jon Dots does a convincing impression of someone who started humming and moaning on Speakers’ Corner only to find that a band had coalesced around him (“what a solid rhythm section” he might have thought as he plucked erratically at his guitar). Yet, amidst the stream of consciousness croons, falsetto yelps, Hendrix guitars, electro backing tracks and whistling, there’s a hint of genius. Not enough genius to get away with wearing sunglasses indoors mind (you wouldn’t accept it from your bank manager, so the same should apply to rock singers), but he’s most definitely a young fellow with lots of talent.
Villagers are a more fully-formed, unaffected and epic proposition and they don’t so much hint at genius as come with all the verified documentation from the Department of Genius, with the lab results signed in triplicate by Director Einstein himself. Dynamically Conor O’Brien has clearly defined about 20 different sub-volumes between quiet and loud. He’s categorised and classified a number of new emotions that fall somewhere between happy and sad, and he has reformatted the torch song with post-post-modern sincerity (real sincerity that is). Basically this is thoughtful and emotionally charged music produced by an unassuming gent with a tiny guitar backed by a highly effective band of intense, focused men who know how to make sound explode. There are hints of Ennio Morricone, Scott Walker, Radiohead and even Calexico around the edges, but at the centre this is original, poetic, heartfelt, and softly anthemic.
And all the time, O’Brien never once dons an interesting hat or affects a streetwise pose. Instead he radiates the charisma and control that comes from having something clear and original to express. It was really simple all along! Do something genuinely meaningful and then you don’t have to date Kate Moss, do drugs, wear “interesting” clothes, or move your dwindling relevance to a tax base in Holland. “Just be really good! Why didn’t I think of that before?” Villagers are really, really good.