Villagers have announced details of their new album That Golden Time and released the video for the title track.
The new album is released on 10 May and follows Villagers' fifth album Fever Dreams.
"I wanted the warmth of the record reflected in its title," front man Conor O’Brien says. "The song also touches on a theme that keeps cropping up, of romanticism versus realism.
"How can you have aspirational ideas about yourself and the world around you, whilst being confronted with a harsh, cold reality? The friction interested me."
The video for That Golden Time was directed by Rok Predin and reflects the album artwork, which displays a textbook drawing of a moth, which is said to be "an avatar for O’Brien’s feelings, disorientated by the constant glare of the mobile screen."
"The moth gets confused by the flame," O’Brien says. "And meets its timely demise."
That Golden Time is described as a "solo-centric" album. However, it was not forced on O’Brien by lockdown.
"For me, That Golden Time has an internalised voice, so much so that I almost found it impossible to let anyone else in," he says. "It’s probably the most vulnerable album I’ve made. I played and recorded everything in my apartment, and finally, towards the end, invited people in."
Among the musicians on the new album are Dónal Lunny of Planxty and The Bothy Band on bouzouki, American songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Peter Broderick on violin, and a group of players that O’Brien had first seen performing in a tribute to one of his great loves, Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who added soprano vocal, viola and cello.
The album also uses an image of a pre-Euro Irish twenty pence piece.
Alongside their previously announced largest ever headline show to date at Dublin’s Trinity College on 29 June, Villagers will also play London’s Royal Festival Hall in June.
The tracklisting for That Golden Hour is: Truly Alone, First Responder, I Want What I Don’t Need, You Lucky One, That Golden Time, Keepsake, Brother Hen, No Drama, Behind That Curtain, Money On The Mind.
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