When Villagers came from Ireland to Australia to tour their debut album Behind the Jackal they did so as a duo, saving on airfares.
But for this year’s Splendour appearance and sideshows, playing songs from second album {Awayland}, we’ll get the full five-piece treatment, and frontman Conor O’Brien says it’ll be pretty different. “The albums are written with full band arrangements so for me I prefer getting to bring the band. It’s just more colourful versions of the songs. It’s more energetic as well, for obvious reasons. Just generally sweatier, really.”
That tour was O’Brien’s first time in Australia and he worried that this far from home nobody would know who they were. He needn’t have. “The shows in Sydney, I think that was a guaranteed audience because it was one of those daytime festivals,” he says, “and I think people came to see a lot of stuff. But the show in Melbourne was our own, my own headline show, and it was completely packed. Which is cool, you know? It’s nice to travel to the other side of the world and people come to see you. Good for the ego.”
Ego is the last thing you’d associate with O’Brien, who is softly spoken and thoughtful. On {Awayland} he writes from an innocent viewpoint, as if he’s seeing the world for the first time. “I think there was an effort to see it from a newborn perspective,” he says. “Maintain that sense of curiosity and wonder that kids have; you start to lose [that] when you get to my age because I’m so old.” By “so old” he means he’s all of 30. “It’s like an early middle-age crisis album, that’s what it is,” he jokes.
One of the few times that O’Brien breaks character and sounds his age is in the final song ‘Rhythm Composer’, in which he gives advice on ignoring the bottomless pits that can consume your life and sings, “When you’re making up for what you lack / That old black dog is on your back”. The ‘black dog’ is what sufferers call clinical depression, but although he uses the term O’Brien isn’t one of them.
“I’ve never been diagnosed with depression, but I’ve never gone and seen anyone about depression. I’ve had pretty dark moments, probably like most people, and I’ve had moments where I didn’t feel the need to do anything, or found it hard to get out of bed or leave my room or see anybody. I’ve also had quite panic-attacky moments in terms of social relationships with other people and just general fucked-up moods, but I think most people have gone through that. It’s just something you don’t really talk about. I think that influenced my words quite a lot and in fact I think it’s probably one of the main driving forces behind writing, because I think if I didn’t write I’d probably go crazy.”
For someone who panics in social situations you’d think performing in front of a crowd would be hard, but according to O’Brien it’s quite the opposite. “When I’m on stage anything that’s happening, like if I’m feeling sick or something, if I have the flu or any sort of sickness or illness, the hour before you go on stage it starts to go away, and I feel really good. I feel really energised. I do the show and I’m totally on a high for an hour after, I still feel great, but then the sickness just comes back, whatever you’re suffering from. It’s something quite deep-rooted, performance, for me. I feel like it’s in my blood, which is completely bizarre because I’m not the most gregarious person in real life. I have my moments, but when I get on stage and I have my songs that I’ve worked very hard on to sing, I think I have a reason to live.”
BY JODY MACGREGOR
Villagers make their full-band debut at Splendor in the Grass on July 27, as well as a headline show at The Factory Theatre on August 1. Awayland is out now through Domino Records.
