The depth of emotion communicated in the songs of Conor O’Brien is reflected in his two Ivor Novello awards, for Best Song – “Becoming A Jackal”, and Best Album – Darling Arithmetic, which formalised his reputation as one of the leading songwriters of his generation. Of even greater significance is the relationship Villagers have built with their audience, one coloured by a great sense of communal catharsis and the capacity for articulating the affairs of the heart that are too often left unspoken.

2021 sees Villagers release his fifth studio album Fever Dreams. Written over the course of two years, the main bodies of the songs were recorded in a series of full-band studio sessions in late 2019 and early 2020. Over the course of the long, slow pandemic days, O’Brien refined them in his tiny home studio in Dublin, and the album was then mixed by David Wrench (Frank Ocean, The xx, FKA Twigs). These are songs with the strange, melted shapes and the magical ambivalence of dreams. The intent of the songs is both mysterious and as clear as a bell. With this album, there is a sense of a deepening mastery and an expanding reach by O’Brien.

Fever Dreams follows The Art Of Pretending To Swim, Darling Arithmetic, {Awayland} and Becoming A Jackal. Conor O’Brien also has a string of accolades under his belt including  two Mercury Music Prize nominations and is a previous winner of Ireland’s Choice Music Prize. Additionally, Villagers’ music has featured in the BBC/Hulu series Normal People and their Spotify session of “Nothing Arrived” has hit over 165 million streams.