Beatles or Beach Boys? Or maybe Gil Evans meets Alice Coltrane meets Todd Rundgren meets Burt Bacharach meets Bright Eyes? Villagers aka Conor O'Brien has created a surreal world on new album "Fever Dreams" that brings back many memories of the familiar and the familiar, and in the end amounts to a wonderful island of sound on which to rest from the stresses of reality. "I just wanted to have a good time myself with the band I had been touring with continuously for the previous three years," recaps the Irishman. "My main goal was to turn half-finished songs into something enjoyable together. More important to me than the concept for the final result is the social aspect of playing with real people in a real space."
However, this backdoor to a parallel universe doesn't sound like a single band at all, but rather a conglomeration of every conceivable musical sound (and form of expression) from combo to big band to classical orchestra to film soundtrack to crafty studio project. "Band recording ended when Covid began," O'Brien admits. "Everything was recorded, but suddenly I had a full year without work. So I sat down to record and kept adding layers to it. The work was done, now I was just playing around with the material, adding more instruments and remixing some stuff. I wanted the album to be enjoyed on the surface as much as on a deeper level."
