Conor O'Brien earned comparisons to the likes of Conor Oberst,
Damien Rice, and Glen Hansard on Villagers' 2010 debut Becoming
a Jackal, and they were deserved on a musical level: as with
Bright Eyes, the Frames, and Rice's solo work, Villagers start
with humble folk and build outwards with daunting orchestral
arrangements and subtle electronics. Implicit in those
comparisons is the assumption of O'Brien as a similarly young
old-soul, a world-weary troubadour who lives to fight an eternal
struggle: How does one convey the truth to the listener without
sounding like a pedant, or worse, a fool? Success is typically
achieved in a way that parallels the expansive demeanor of the
music: starting with the knowledge that everyone is at the very
least an expert on their own experience, and using your own
truth to project outwards towards larger ideas. That's where
O'Brien breaks rank, as Villagers take the opposite approach on
the occasionally charming but mostly frustrating {Awayland}, an
album which too often has b