When Ireland’s biggest indie band announced their new album, few would have expected any attention to shift quickly to the estates of Skelmersdale.

Soon though, ten of thousands of pairs of eyes were set upon the West Lancashire town as it played host to the video for ‘The First Day’, the first single of the Villagers’ latest offering, ‘Fever Dreams’.

The 1960s new town, with its quiet streets absent of vehicles or widely known landmarks, was chosen specifically for its vagueness, with director Daniel Brereton believing that it offers qualities which left the video open for interpretation in terms of both time and meaning.

The band, an indie folk outfit, released their first album in 2010 and have since gone on to pick up two Mercury Prize nominations and twice won prestigious Ivor Novello awards

Daniel, who lives in Lancaster, said he visited the town during one of his many trips around the North West during which he likes to take photographs of interesting places and quickly identified it as a place he would like to shoot a video.

He said: “I like taking photographs of places and going to visit them, especially in the North West which is where I’m from.

“I went there and took some photographs and thought ‘this looks a cool place to shoot a video’

“The architecture is very interesting. There’s areas with no cars so there’s no timestamp so it could be any time.”

Speaking to the NME, lead singer Conor O’Brien said of the video: “We were very lucky to shoot on film and have great casting and styling. Shooting during a pandemic is not easy, so I feel fortunate that we got to make it happen.”

The song itself starts as a pop folk tune with warped vocals before developing into a celebratory, brass-infused number, part of an album which Conor describes as ‘ecstatic, euphoric and escapist music’

Based around the concept of the first day of the rest of your life, the video begins in black and white before bursting into colour as a woman dressed in bright yellow breaks into dance. The darkness of December in Birch Green contrasts that colour and energy throughout, while stunt work which sees the woman suspended in the air adds to the dreamlike quality.

Explaining its origins to LancsLive, Daniel said: “Me and Conor discussed it for the video and with there not being much travel last year and we wanted to make stuff in the North West because I’m from there and like working there, I suggested it and he basically trusted me to do it.

“We got permission from the council in the area that we wanted to shoot.

“There was a person, Sara, who gave us permission to shoot on her doorstep which was really nice for her to do that in December.”

Conor described the song as a ‘paean to human connection’ and while the video appears to have themes of escapism, Daniel says this is not intended to paint Skelmersdale in a negative light, though its ‘maze-like’ layout adds to the feeling of the girl battling to leave.

In fact, he says one of his aims in photographing and shooting videos around the North West is to take places which may have bad reputations or be associated with anti-social and criminal behaviour and show them in a different perspective.

Daniel said: “I went to Skelmersdale first to take photographs and it was really inspiring, there’s these spaces where you can shoot quite a lot because of the roads not being there.

“Seeing the girl dancing around the area and the colours from the girl’s clothes all contrast with the setting.

“When we went there, the people were really nice and friendly. These places have a bad reputation but it’s not like the people are like that at all.”

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