Villagers - Fever Dreams

Die-cut jacket with four interchangable covers

Limited time album download included

Escapism is a very necessary pursuit right now, and Conor O'Brien follows it to mesmerizing effect on Villagers' fifth studio album. Fever Dreams works like all the best records — it becomes a mode of transport; it picks you up from where you are and sets you down elsewhere.

"I had an urge to write something that was as generous to the listener as it was to myself," he says. "Sometimes the most delirious states can produce the most ecstatic, euphoric and escapist dreams."

These are songs with the strange, melted shapes and the magical ambivalence of dreams. On Fever Dreams, there is a sense of a deepening mastery and an expanding reach. There is a fullness, a sense of earned wholeness. Its sound is big and rich. The intent of the songs is both mysterious and as clear as a bell. There is a sense of ease to the songwriting, it feels very natural — it's as if these songs were out there all the while, they just needed to be found and carefully picked up.

The songs on Fever Dreams were found in many places and came in from all angles, from connections at County Meath's Another Love Story festival and night swimming on a Dutch island to Flann O'Brien, Audre Lorde, David Lynch, L. S. Lowry via the library music of Piero Umiliani and Alessandro Alessandroni and jazz from Duke Ellington and Alice Coltrane.

Written throughout 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).

Villagers' Conor O'Brien has a string of accolades under his belt including two Ivor Novello Awards (the most recent being 2016's Album Award for Darling Arithmetic), two Mercury Music Prize nominations and is also a previous winner of Ireland's Choice Music Prize.

Side A

1. Something Bigger

2. The First Day

3. Song In Seven

4. So Simpatico

5. Momentarily

Side B

1. Circles In The Firing Line

2. Restless Endeavour

3. Full Faith In Providence

4. Fever Dreams

5. Deep In My Heart

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