Getting a sense of the real Conor O’Brien can seem a bit like trying to shove a bolt of lightning into a bottle – an impossible task. A gifted and articulate lyricist he may be, but most of the time O’Brien’s confessionals appear at a remove, as if he doesn’t want to give away too much detail that could be directed back towards him at a later date.
Such theories tend to lose their grip when confronted with gorgeous songs such as those on That Golden Time. Indeed, for his sixth album O’Brien excels himself when it comes to his craft: there isn’t a duff song here, just 10 gems whose charms glimmer at every edge or curve. It helps that the album is something of an about-face from Villagers’ 2021 album, Fever Dreams, which, perhaps tipping a hat to its title, occasionally drifted into too much noodling fusion territory for its own good.
That Golden Times is the proverbial chalk to Fever Dreams’ cheese: the songs are as subtle and unaffected as any O’Brien has put his name to (and that includes his beguiling 2010 debut, Becoming a Jackal). There are extremely clever production touches throughout.
In No Drama, O’Brien sings, “such a simple life you’re looking for, no drama, knocking at the door ...’ to the background sound of the siren of a speeding ambulance. In Behind the Curtain, the album’s longest track, at six minutes, lounge piano blends with beautiful approximations of Sigur Rós ambience and glitchy, climactic jazz as O’Brien croons, “It’s a funny old game. Everyone is going insane ...’
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Another song, I Want What I Don’t Need, is the most fingerpickingly folksy thing you’ll hear outside of Bob Dylan’s early-1960s archives, a word-perfect scenario (”there’s a fairy tale we call free will, it was funny then and it’s funny still”) of cynical consumerism presented to us by tech companies.
With these songs and more, O’Brien delivers Villagers’ most striking album yet – compact in scope, significant in impact.
