With his sixth album under the name Villagers, Conor O’Brien returns to focus on the narrative structure of his songs. While “Fever Dreams” had ventured into an intense journey of sensorial exploration and discovery, “That Golden Time” seeks to investigate, through the story-telling process, the liminal space that separates reality and appearance, truth and lie.
This new research takes the form of apparently contrasting musical choices, but which are actually united by a delicacy which, despite having always been an integral part of the Dublin singer-songwriter’s repertoire, envelops the new collection in a fragile mantle of celestial ether.
The minimal scores, centered on the trusty acoustic guitar (“I Want What I Don’t Need”) or piano notes (“Money On The Mind”), are alternated with more ambitious arrangements, reminiscent of the orchestral crescendos of “Fever Dreams” . And so, as happened in “The First Day” or “Song In Seven”, “No Drama” and “First Responder” return sudden moments of spiritual ecstasy.
An electronic substrate also returns, which had already played an important role in the compositions of “{Awayland}”. If in “Keepsake” it is inflected psychedelic pop, it is in the surprising coda of “Behind That Curtain” that it finds its best application. Just as Conor’s melancholic acting seems to preclude the possibility of discovering what lies behind a lowered theatrical curtain, the unlikely encounter between the suffused jazzy textures and a loops ambient-techno breaks an invisible sensorial barrier and reveals an underground melody, buried in the heart of a piece (“play”) which represents, through a metaphor dear to baroque theatre, life itself.
O’Brien therefore seems to have arrived at conclusions similar to the dreamlike suggestions that resided in “Fever Dreams”: when the logos cannot decipher the ultimate meaning of the Universe, a different communication channel can give rise to a cognitive epiphany capable of changing everything. In this case, just close your eyes and let yourself be carried away by the music.
12/05/2024
