Photo: WENN
It’s Thursday night and Heaven is packed to the rafters to see Irish quartet Villagers, fresh from their brush with Mercury pseudo-stardom, dazzle with a set that gives equal-weighting to most recent long player Awayland and debut album Becoming a Jackel.
The band take to the stage promptly at 8.30pm as frontman Conor O’Brien serenades the Charing Cross venue with Awayland opener 'My Lightouse'; the delicate harmonies provided by guitarist Tommy McLaughlin and keyboardist Cormac Curran prove particularly enthralling from the outset.
This is a set with highlights in abundance and not even the noisy air conditioning unit that does its best blight the more intimate moments of the performance can detract from the evening. Specific peaks come during the numbers from the aforementioned debut. '27 Strangers', 'The Pact' as well as the band’s “most punk rock number 'Ship of Promises' go down a storm. Later in the set O’Brien, a man of few words, introduces the band before stating “we love you” and it’s clear from the audience’s response that the feeling is mutual.
There are occasions when the band, seemingly enraptured by the sound they are creating, lose themselves, forgetting where they are and any sense of restraint is lost in a fog of feedback. In O’Brien this manifests itself in a number of ways either through bizarre hand gesticulations, or mono-syllabic yelps to his band. These outbursts, afflictions (call them what you will) occur most blatantly during 'The Bell' and the quasi-gothic dancehall of 'Earthly Pleasure'.
Despite its rather misleading moniker, there is nothing even remotely celestial about tonight’s venue but it’s the Irishmen, and in particular the magnanimous O’Brien, that delight tonight. Having borne witness to the young man’s soaring vocals which are at one moment abrasively robust, the next delicate and divine, tonight is proof that Heaven really is right here on Earth with us.
