Villagers – {Awayland}

Not A Tourist Destination

Coming off the heels of their highly lauded 2010 album Becoming a Jackal, Irish folk band Villagers appear to have fallen into the sophomore slump with their latest, {Awayland}. While it evolves from their first offering in its exploration of bigger sounds (slight electronics and drum machines taking a page from Radiohead), the meat of the songs on this album still retain the world-weary traveling man aesthetic with dark, soulful vocals. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, it just doesn’t offer anything new and exciting.

Opener “My Lighthouse,” starts things off with standard folk guitar plucking and quivering vocal harmonizing. While this song indicates to fans that nothing has changed, the next track, “Earthly Pleasure,” turns the band’s sound on its head with electronic sensibilities and vocals that sound as though they were recorded in an echoing tunnel. It’s different and celestial but still retains the storyteller lyrical qualities Villagers does best. This particular song was interesting in how different it was and how much it stood out in comparison to the rest of what is offered. When listening to the next few songs, they made for good background noise but doesn’t strike up much notice outside of what bands like Edward Sharpe have already done. Other tracks of mention include “In Newfound Land You Are Free,” and “Nothing Arrived.” The pattern here are disquieting lyrics and somber vocal styling by Conor O’Brien.

{Awayland} isn’t a bad album by any stretch, the problem is it’s just underwhelming. With the increasing popularity of indie folk, a band has to really make an effort to stick out from the rest of the pack. Songs like “Earthly Pleasure,” demonstrate that Villagers is capable, the problem lies in sustaining this over the course of 11 tracks.