Becoming a Jackal is the debut long-play presentation of the songwriting of Conor J. O’Brien, an Irish singer and multi-instrumentalist with the band Villagers. Comfortable manipulating multiple harmonic forms integrated into deceptively simple melodies, Villagers plays to open minds while shifting sonic structures to demand attentive listening from even the most cynical listener. With ambiguous personal themes and fragile voice alternately buoyant and submerged, O’Brien understates microcosmic observations draped in dark metaphors – a musical analogue to Christopher Wool’s stenciled text painting hanging inside the rear entrance to the Carnegie Museum of Art:  both provide beautiful puzzles to reconsider those moments simultaneously past and anticipated.