To say 2010 has been an eventful year for Villagers would be an understatement. From nervously awaiting his parents' verdict on Becoming a Jackal to bringing Amsterdam to a hush, Conor O'Brien looks back over his diary with JIM CARROLL
A GREY, COLD, November day in Brussels. Somewhere in this sombre city, European mandarins are sighing heavily over the ruinous state of the Irish economy and making calculations that run into the tens of billions.
In a hotel next door to the Botanique venue – one of the only venues in the world where exotic fish swim in an indoor pool – Conor O’Brien is doing some counting of his own.
Like the Irish economy, the exact figure is still a matter of some conjecture, but O’Brien reckons he’s done about 200 gigs in 2010. He can’t even begin to count the number of interviews he’s given since debut album Becoming a Jackal was released. That’s how he has spent 2010 – talking by day, gigging by night.
Some interviews have been more memorable than others. “I did an interview in Berlin with this youth radio station and the DJ said he was reading a lot about how Ireland’s economy was in the shit and he’d written a song he wanted me to sing about it. Yes, this was live, we were on air.
“The song went ‘I am Irish, you are Irish, we are all Irish, aren’t we? Yeah!’ I was ‘what?’ He said he wanted to show that we were all in this together. I said I wasn’t going to sing his words and the grammar was totally wrong. I sang one of my own songs instead and said it was about prostitutes. I don’t think he was too happy.”
JANUARY, GRONINGEN THE EUROSONIC FESTIVAL
This is where promoters, agents and media come to find next big things. In an unflattering room located far from the main drag, O’Brien plays his first gig of the year. The songs are strong and the performance is decent, but there will be better gigs.
“It was just another gig,” recalls O’Brien. “But because of that gig, we ended up with a promoter in the Netherlands and we got loads of festivals out of that show. I wasn’t approaching it with that stuff in mind. Since The Immediate ended, I’ve lost that careerist thing, which is quite ironic.”
He talks about The Immediate, his first group, with great fondness. “The magic was only there when no one knew about us. We played our best shows to tiny audiences when it was messy and ramshackle. When we tried to be slicker, it just didn’t work.”
He has certainly moved on.
FEBRUARY, DUBLIN THE O’BRIEN FAMILY HOME, THE PLAYBACK OF BECOMING A JACKAL FOR HIS FOLKS
"My parents were in one room and I was two doors down, trying to listen to what they had to say like I was a seven-year-old boy. Some of the songs are a bit heavy and the lyrics are a bit strange and they were 'okay, that's interesting'. But I think they quite like it. They like songs like The Pactbecause there's a lot of melody. Every now and then when I go home, my dad will have these interviews from the paper or a magazine and he'll go 'that's not you!'"
Like many songwriters, O’Brien can only hear what’s missing when he listens back to recordings of his songs. “When you write songs and you’re as obsessive about it as I am, the finished thing is always a compromise. You had to stop doing it so you would not spend the next year on it. You hope people don’t hear the bit you think could be better.”
ST PATRICK’S DAY, AUSTIN, TEXAS SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST
Hundreds – nah, thousands – of new bands competing for your time and attention at the biggest music cattle show in the world.
O’Brien plays a solo gig in a noisy tavern on Sixth Street. He stares wide-eyed at the the audience and we stare back. One man spends the show scribbling non-stop in his notebook. These scribbles later show up as a New York Times review comparing O’Brien to Leonard Cohen.
“I did so many shows that week that I really didn’t know that one was the important one,” O’Brien says. “I’ve done this thing piece by piece. I started by putting songs up on the internet before I had a band or before I did a show. I don’t think so much about this kind of thing. I just write songs and they’re central to everything else.
“The only reason I’m worthy to be up on that stage in the first place is because of the songs I wrote, the time I spent on them and the love and discipline I put into them. I’d have a panic attack if I was on a stage without having done that work.”
MAY, KILKENNY THE SET THEATRE: THE FIRST DATE OF A SUMMER TOUR
The album and O’Brien’s performance on Later . . . With Jools Holland the previous week means a curious audience on a school night. This time, he is joined by the other Villagers (Tommy McLaughlin, Cormac Curran, James Byrne and Danny Snow), and there’s an excitement about how this band can embellish and amplify the songs without losing any of the inherent essence or charm.
O’Brien raves about the band, their musicianship and the muscle they provide. As the year has gone by, that live show has just got better, bolder, brasher.
Some shows are decorated with gold stars. “We did a show in Nijmegen in the Netherlands, which is one of our favourite shows ever. It was sold out, and you could feel this air of anticipation. We walked on and it was ‘wow!’ You give back as much as the audience give to you.”
He also likes the fact that audiences are coming out to hear the band rather than the sound of their own voices. “I don’t think I’d tell an audience to shut the fuck up these days. I did it before in Ireland. Sometimes it’s annoying when you feel that most of the people are there for the experience and there are a few people who are ruining it. You don’t want to be a Nazi about it.
“We played the London Calling festival in Amsterdam, which is young, loud and very rock’n’roll, and they put up posters all around the venue saying ‘out of respect to our artists, please be quiet during Villagers’. We were really embarrassed. We said to the promoter that we weren’t sure about the posters, and he said he was trying to be nice. But people and other bands are going to think we’re dicks. I heard a few very sarcastic shushes during our first few songs, and felt like a real asshole onstage.”
SEPTEMBER, STRADBALLY ELECTRIC PICNIC
A tent rammed to the flagpoles with punters as giddy as goats. After the first number, O’Brien steps out to the lip of the stage and gestures “come on!” at the crowd. There’s a roar as loud as thunder in return, and the gig never dips below the stratosphere.
“I’ve realised the importance of body language this year,” says O’Brien. “The whole show is a show, even when you’re not singing. But you can’t be too calculating about it, because it becomes a piece of choreography. I’ve seen that happen with some bands, who take on these tricks and forget what’s real.
“You can’t get too scripted or sleek, unless you’ve got a dance routine. That’s not going to be us. Well, I don’t think so.”
SEPTEMBER, LONDON THE MERCURY MUSIC PRIZE DINNER-DANCE
History will record that Becoming a Jackaldidn't win, but O'Brien was never too fussed about it. "I was frustrated that I couldn't bring the band, but it was good – a red-carpet circus. I got to sing my song to music industry folks. I sang 'so before you take this song as truth', paused and then (shaking his finger) sang 'you should wonder what I am taking from you'." He laughs at the memory.
NOVEMBER, BRUSSELS A BEAUTIFUL ROUND ROOM IN THE BOTANIQUE ON RUE ROYALE
With 300 punters in for an hour-long set that soars in the all right ways and places. There's a couple of new songs ( Memoir, a song O'Brien has recorded with Charlotte Gainsbourg for her next album, is particularly shapely) and lots of old favourites. Afterwards, the band sell another batch of albums, CDs and T-shirts at the merchandise stall and send 'em home glowing.
JANUARY, 2011 WHO KNOWS WHERE?
O’Brien wants to “disappear for a while and write a bunch of new songs, read a bunch of new books and try not to spend any money”.
He'll polish songs like In a New Found Land, You Are Free("that was written on a boat from Vancouver to Vancouver Island, which was very inspiring"), Grateful Songand others before putting away his notebook and heading to Singapore and Australia for solo shows in February.
“I need time – I don’t work very fast. I don’t even think there will be an album next year, because I feel I need time to get all my ideas together. Maybe it will be five years. There’s no rush.”
But first, an Irish tour to round off this mighty year. “I miss Ireland. When I go back, I just get to wash my clothes and go again. Being away has made me think about issues of nationalism and where you’re from, especially at this time when you’re hearing and reading so much about the economy.
“You can be proud of where you’re from, but that shouldn’t be the focus. The only thing you should be proud of is something you’ve achieved yourself. You shouldn’t just be proud of where you were born, because you had no control over that. You should be respectful and thankful for that, but not proud.
“It’s weird to be kind of separate from it, because this has been our most successful year as a touring band. I have a weird guilt complex going on in my head because half of my friends are losing their jobs. It’s stuff I’ve never had to think about before.
“So I’m looking forward to the tour in December. Without getting too sentimental or ridiculous about it, it will feel like a homecoming. That’s the place that we started and learned our trade. The Immediate meant I had a few fans at the start, but we did still play to quarter-full rooms while we built things up over four tours. I feel we have something to prove, too.”
Villagers’ Irish tour begins at The Forum, Waterford on December 13. See wearevillagers.com for full details. Becoming a Jackal is out on Domino
