Irish act breaks out, breaks exactly even with TSJ…
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Pete Baran: Every three years I delude myself into believing I could make some electronic, usually after listing to an old Orb album. After fixing up a bassline and playing with the latest free online sequencer, I probably have three vaguely interesting rhythms and tunes weaving in and out of each other. Then I think it doesn’t sound like anything I want it to sound like, but if maybe I sang badly over it, it might sound a bit moody and like real music. If I had the patience and maybe didn’t give up after two days, it would probably sound a bit like this. I’d bin it cos I would hate it.
[3]
Jonathan Bogart: It’s probably unfair of me to punish the song for being far more dynamic than I first expected it to be (I would have adored a minimal electronic burble throughout). Then again, once the guy started singing I knew it was over.
[4]
Patrick St. Michel: Conor O’Brien’s voice is the obstacle to getting into “The Waves,” his delivery sounding like someone speaking to you while resting their head on your shoulder. Get over it, though, and you’ll find a song built on something resembling Morse code that builds up to a climax worthy of the song’s apocalyptic lyrics.
[7]
Brad Shoup: A self-satisfied piece of literary alt-rock, simultaneously trying too hard and not hard enough (cf. rhyming “cemeteries” with “dignitaries”). Starts off like a Jamie xx production as heard down the hall, then buries the pleasant taps ‘n’ timbres in Digital Ash. For not knowing when to stop, this score and the gas face.
[3]
Alfred Soto: The transition from Four Tet electronic murmurs to symphonic grandeur impressed me far more than the colorless voice trying to dangle conversations.
[3]
Katherine St Asaph: I tried very hard to like Villagers’ Becoming a Jackal, it being a rare Irish breakout album, but all I could do was wonder how a) centuries of evolution made jackals so toothless and dull, and b) this was the triumph of 2010. “The Waves” starts out pretty enough, if still restrained; little pings aside, it’s not too far from Conor’s old stuff. The “Surgeon” climax, though, and its fritzing guitar and haywire-machine blips, is. Is everyone‘s game just being raised this year?
[7]
Iain Mew: I previously had Conor O’Brien down as a second-rate Bright Eyes who barely even had his own name, but this is different. His barely contained intensity and the disconnected piano combine for a tension that he draws out expertly. When the crunch inevitably comes it’s still a bit of a tease, only ever “approaching the shore,” but while he never shows the destination, the journey is worth taking in itself.
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