Released: 2021
Like it or not, we’re becoming programmed to consume everything voraciously, and form opinions at the basest of levels on pretty much everything that doesn’t insist on being slowly revealed.
This makes the first 30 seconds of most songs so important. As generation after generation has mastered the skip button, if what hear in the time it takes to peel an orange isn’t something that maps into our ideas of good, then it’s sayonara and on to the next thing. It’s not you, it’s most definitely us.
Connor O’ Brien’s mercurial talents had been recognised in the guise of two Ivor Novello awards and a brace of Mercury Nominations by the time Fever Dreams in 2021; symptomatic of the era, it had been half made in the studio and then half in isolation at home.
At it’s nuggety heart was a song that begun as if he didn’t want people to listen; blurry and out of tune, The First Day arrived sounding hungover, before teeering awkwardly at the thirty second mark into exquisite psychedelic pop. You may well have skipped early. You really should go back.
The Voice Of Unreason 