In May 2011, when Conor J O’Brien (Villagers) won the Ivor Novello prize for “Best Song Musically and Lyrically” with Becoming A Jackal, my ears pricked up. I enjoyed the album of the same name, too, and in turn, I quite liked 2013’s {Awayland}. Both records have some really strong material on them, but maybe didn’t quite consistently do it for me over their duration. New release Darling Arithmetic sees a paring down of instrumentation and number of tracks, and arrives at a winning formula.
Written, recorded, produced and mixed entirely by O’Brien, Darling Arithmetic may be viewed by some as an industry standard singer/songwriter “loved and lost” box now ticked – a rite of passage, if you will. Indeed, in most artists’ cases such albums are precisely that, but Villagers have delivered their first classic album, showing contemporaries exactly how it is done.
This album’s brilliance centres around two key components – masterful economy on all fronts and an underlying sense of the classic. The “economy” part is perhaps easier to quantify, and typified succinctly in the opening three songs: Courage, Everything I Am Is Yours and Dawning On Me. All three tracks feature basic, spare arrangements, simple chord sequences and straightforward lyrics. Everything laid down is essential to the song and no more complicated or elaborate than is necessary, resulting in tracks that have space to breathe. Prince famously said that there is joy in repetition; well, there’s a certain magic to simplicity, too – illustrated in the instrumental chorus in Courage – no additions are made to the section, just subtraction of the vocal, which sounds glorious upon re-entry.
Moving over to the concept of classic, everything about fourth track Hot Scary Summer argues my case. Its lovely delivery is half sung, half spoken. It brims with graceful word play, but truth lies very close to surface.
“We got good at pretending / And then pretending got us good. We've always been up against it / But now it's sad to see. We're up against each other in this hot scary summer”
From the gorgeous chord inversion at the end of the choruses to the warm harmonies and change of melody in the second verse, everything is tied together perfectly. Not many writers can take such a soulful detour in the middle 8, yet somehow lift the listener back into the chorus. There’s no other word for it, it’s classic songwriting.
Hot Scary Summer isn’t out there on its own – an exceptional backbone runs throughout the record – Courage, Soul Serene, Darling Arithmetic and No One To Blame line the start, middle and end with songs that are so strong, vital and charismatic that there’s never a weak moment. Further, they provide the foundations for the more experimental or playful numbers to hang off (wistful closer So Naïve, and Little Bigot with its nod to Bill Callahan/Smog spring to mind). Soul Serene in particular is stunning; the tender bassline forming its heartbeat is one of the few noticeable progressions from {Awayland}. You’ll have to look far and wide to find a more mesmeric, meditative chorus – a wonderful mirroring of the music to its lyric.
The title track, Darling Arithmetic, feels important to the album, too, carrying a change of pace and mood in a composition that bears the weight of the album title, its position within it and the sadness of a romance that has come to end.
“If ours was a dream / A phantom, a sacred scheme / Then how did it end it so quick, my Darling Arithmetic?”
No One To Blame wraps up the classic offering nicely. We’ve heard this type of song of self-reflection many times before – the familiar chord progression, the chiming piano and the understated melody. But again, it’s about the craft employed to piece all of these components together that makes the song shine. There’s an air of positive romantic hindsight, but no bitterness:
“See there’s a mystery in your eyes / A kind of swimming pool for swimming fools like me”
On paper, another stripped back album on the subject of love and loss seems pretty unappealing. After all, it has been done to death. However, every so often someone comes along, sheds new light on a familiar theme, and changes the way we view it, rekindling a once waning interest. Villagers haven’t re-written the book or anything like that, but this album is proof that there’s plenty of mileage left to be had on time-old subjects if you have a bit of class.
Adam Atkins