Villagers - Where Have You Been All My Life?

Recorded in a day at London’s RAK Studios, this live love letter to little moments from Villagers’ discography sees the Irish indie folkers stripping things down in pursuit of purity. Conor O’Brien is on fine form, his vocal full of zip and gravity as it rides above these streamlined compositions and there is an undeniable intimacy at work here. Track after lovely track passes and there is plenty that’s done right but perhaps too much fat has been trimmed from some of these once weighty songs. Marking the start of the home stretch, a more acoustic but brilliantly soaring rendition of The Waves really delivers on the potential that remains annoyingly latent for most of the album and stands up as the biggest victory in adaptation. It just niggles that this wasn’t replicated across more of the tracklist. As an effort this should be applauded and the tightrope walk between full blown studio effort and the snapshot glory of a live album proper is navigated with admirable care. It’s a shame that it ends up leaving the finished article in an awkward place, lacking both the depth of the former and the fleeting risk-taking of the latter.