Multi Ivor Novello award-winners Villagers and Meteor Music Award winner Mick Flannery are to share a melodic bill at Galway International Arts Festival this July.
Villager’s Conor O’Brien is a single-minded artist at the peak of his considerable songwriting powers. His third and most recent album Darling Arithmetic recently took home the prestigious Ivor Novello Album Award, while his 2010 debut album Becoming A Jackal and its 2013 successor Awayland were both hugely acclaimed and Mercury nominated. The latter went on to win Ireland’s equivalent Choice Prize. O'Brien also received an Ivor Novello in 2011 for the Best Song Musically & Lyrically for Becoming a Jackal.
Darling Arithmetic is a brave and committed new step forward. O’Brien plays every instrument on these exquisite, melodic songs in a beautifully sparse, spacious, intimate, acoustic-leaning fashion. Live shows mirror the music, encompassing various shades of feeling – desire, obsession, lust, loneliness and confusion, and deeper into philosophical and existential territory, across a cast of lovers, friends, family and even strangers.
In January 2016, Villagers also released Where Have You Been All My Life? a collection of songs recorded with Richard Woodcraft (Radiohead, The Last Shadow Puppets). Meteor Music Award winner Mick Flannery is a refreshingly unassuming artist, whose stage presence exudes no superficial gimmicks, just a man sharing his songs in an understated but powerful manner. This attribute, combined with the heartfelt honesty in his lyrics, has won him worthy comparisons to such great songwriters as Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits.
Villagers and Mick Flannery play the Absolut Big Top on 19 July. Tickets on sale here now and at roisindubh.net.