Villagers // Becoming a Jackal

Here's a review of the excellent Becoming a Jackal single from Villagers for The Fugitive Motel.

Villagers // Becoming a Jackal
Domino Records // 24th May 2010

Villagers is not a bunch of slightly rotund, red cheeked gentlemen in tweed and dirty fingernails lambasting the local Tesco’s. Neither is Villagers a gaggle of haunted housewives decked in Laura Ashley regaling the pursuits of their darlings in the school hall coffee morning. Villagers is, however, folk. Pure folk. Not alt or nu or anything, but folk in its truest sense.

Becoming a Jackal, the title track from Villagers’ debut album, is Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in a single, one Irish man package. Yes, the lyrics are a touch yearning at times: “I was a dreamer / staring at windows”, for example, could easily be misconstrued as clumsily airy, but the uneasy delivery and sinister accompaniment make them entirely believable. When he sings despairingly of selling his fears as the track closes, his demons almost visible on his shoulders, it feels like hearing Bright Eyes again for the first time. Not only that, his name’s Conor J O’Brien. Spooky.