Every music genre is beautiful. I am the type of guy who can listen to classic music and turbo-folk music. On the other hand, every music genre is limited. Indie folk, a very hyped music during the past decade, is especially subject to limitations. Even though Conor Oberts and its followers enriched folk with the new sound, I often hear forced and lame solutions.
For example, on the second album of the young Irish men called Villagers, we can find a great melody Waves that is destroyed by flirting with psychedelic MGMT-related sound. Besides this flaw, Conor O’Brien and the company offer us a pure, intimate music experience that folk fans deserve. The album that I am writing about at the moment is a cover album called Where Have You Been All My Life. I am not a fan of rating albums on a quantitative scale, but this is a 3\5 album. There are some unnecessary covers such as Set The Tigers Free, So Naïve, Everything I Am Is Yours that sound better on albums Becoming A Jackal and Darling Arithmetic.
On the other side, we have diamonds such as Wichita Lineman, non pretentious and subtle cover of legendary Glen Campbell’s song from 1968. No matter how beautiful Campbell’s version is, after you here how Villagers perform it, you will have a feeling like the original is made of plastic. So, their version is made of the finest tree.
I also adore Hot Scary Summer because they deleted echo effect on the vocal and made a magical acoustic.
Less is more is a motto of Where Have You Been All My Life. Villagers have done what Labchop have done with Mr.M in 2012 – they showed the music world that songs with solid melody and sincere emotion do not need special production effects.
