Review | Villagers at The Wedgewood Rooms, Southsea: 'Rarely far from gorgeous'

Gradually the rest of the band joins him and the song – My Lighthouse – swells into something rather beautiful.

Unsurprisingly the set leans heavily on most recent album, Fever Dreams, but all of their discography is represented in this career-spanning setlist.

Villagers – who are to all intents and purposes O’Brien plus hired hands – have often been lumped in with the indie-folk movement, and there are moments tonight where that is an apt buttonhole for them, but live they can also be rather more muscular.

The music is woozy, sometimes disorienting, but rarely far from gorgeous.

This is shown to most stunning effect during the coda to Dreams’ track Circles in The Firing Line. The recorded version is one of Villagers’ more rocky numbers, but here O’Brien swaps his acoustic guitar for an electric for the only time of the night and unleashes a positively ferocious solo at the song’s climax.

The band behind O’Brien – drummer, bassist and two keys/synth players – are tight, and create some incredible backings for the songs, giving them depth beyond their recorded counterparts.

This is most notable on the numbers from 2015’s largely acoustic Darling Arithmetic, reworked now for a full band – particularly effective is Hot Scary Summer.

Occasionally O’Brien breaks out a trumpet – there’s a muted solo during Momentarily, but also for something more out-there alongside the pounding keys of Restless Endeavour.

Fever Dreams’ title track is introduced as being ‘a song about nightmares’, and it is a swirling, hallucinatory piece you could get totally lost in.

For the encores O’Brien initially emerges solo to lead us in a ‘lesson’ so we can accompany him on Nothing Arrived – only to hold one note far beyond the average audience member’s ability, leading to outbreaks of laughter.

From there we get the title track of his debut, Becoming a Jackal, and finishes with a spectacular brace of Fever Dream singles – The First Day and So Simpatico

People talking at gigs is a regular bugbear of mine, but thankfully this was not a problem tonight. That’s not to say the audience are restrained – the applause and cheers after songs is thoroughly and deservedly fulsome.