Villagers
Darling Arithmetic
Reviewed by: Brian Roser
Minimalism can be a good thing. If you add too many whistles and bells to the music, it can actually take away from the intensity of it. Many albums have achieved greatness with the simple accompaniment of an acoustic guitar or maybe a piano. The problem, of course is that if you are too minimalist then there is nothing left. Darling Arithmetic, I’m sorry to say crosses that line.
The music is all about love in its many forms. The tracks on the album range from bittersweet to maudlin, pensive and finally, downright sappy. His voice is not bad, but it wavers a little too often and he is a little too fond of holding onto a note well past its expiration date. The lyrics are not without their high points. One line about relationships I am particularly fond of is “Thanks for the hard work, but this shouldn’t be hard work.”
The band consists of Conor O’Brien, Tommy McLaughlin, Danny Snow, James Byrne and Cormac Curran. The lion’s share of the work, by far seems to come from O’Brien. The new album was written, recorded, produced and mixed by O’Brien at his own home, with him playing all instruments on the record. Now don’t get me wrong, this is impressive, but I’m just wondering if he should have let someone else have some input. Like instead of telling Mozart there were too many notes, they needed to tell O’Brien that there were too few.
O’Brien is a gay man in Ireland, so you know he’s got to have put up with some serious crap growing up in an über Catholic country. This is why it’s so surprising that the song “Little Bigot” was delivered with all the edgy grit of a TV after school special. It’s not that I think his singing completely lacks emotion, his lyrics lack poetry or his music lacks talent, he just needed to put a little more of all of it into this album.
Rating: Semi-Obnoxious
