Behold the anointed one. Just as Rafiki once lifted Simba to show the pride, the Irish scene has pinned all of its usually self-deprecating hopes on Conor O’Brien’s ability to convince the outside world that he, and by extension we, are capable of something empiricially impressive. With the rug swept from under The Immediate before they’d had their fair shot at infiltrating the international indie rock consciousness, O’Brien solo ended up on Domino, being lauded on Jools Holland and raved about in the New York Times.
But beyond his ordained position as the Boy Most Likely To, is Becoming A Jackal really everything it’s cracked up to be? It depends what you’re cracking it up to be. Strummed guitars, piano plinks, unstrained vocals and a discernable smell of log cabin are the order of the day. O’Brien is patently talented, to a degree that even a die-hard country ‘n’ Irish grandmother couldn’t fail to recognizable. And he writes some genuinely touching songs. The title track’s tosses and turns create an uncanny beauty.
The roots go deepest on two tracks that are carried over from last year’s Hollow Kind EP. Pieces is a period piece, a desolute consideration of a life fallen apart, set to music and delivered from the corner of a smoky bar on the set of hammy black and white gangster movie. It’s beautiful and crystalline, even if it is poisoned a touch by about a minute of unnecessary wolf-howling over the outro. The Meaning of the Ritual, however, is untouchable. Over an understated organ, O’Brien scrapes the brain nodes of sadness in a new and devastating way. But in between these peaks, he does nod knowingly at the AOR devil, and recognizing this is the first step towards sleeping happily with the hype.
