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Paste - "B-Sides" - November 2004
With his impassioned tone and impressive range (not to mention his fetching
mystique), Irish singer/songwriter Damien Rice generated quite a buzz when
he hit these shores in 2003 with his debut, O. For those “Volcano” lovers
who can’t bear to wait any longer for a new Rice album (reportedly due in
early ’05), this EP will tide you over with nearly 30 minutes of pure
rapture. Though “Volcano” accounts for two of the seven tracks on B-Sides,
the versions here vary widely from the crowd pleaser on O. One is a fierce
instrumental, highlighting the interplay of cello and guitar; the other a
spare, early demo of the song that Rice, accompanied only by acoustic
guitar, put on tape in 1997. The other repeat from Rice’s debut, “Delicate,”
is from a New Year’s Eve show in Dublin: The electricity in the air that
night is palpable on this highly charged version (again, just Rice and his
guitar). B-Sides’ other four selections are superb: the spare,
self-lacerating “The Professor & La Fille Danse” is a cure-all for
Francophiles and Rice-ophiles; the soulful “Lonelily,” which builds to
anthemic proportions, should be a hit single; the live favourite, “Woman
Like a Man,” presents Rice in a heated exchange with his duet partner Lisa
Hannigan; and “Moody Mooday,” another vocal collaboration with Hannigan, is
a sultry Celtic-style piece. With B-Sides this alluring, one can only
imagine what Rice’s long-player will sound like.
Holly George-Warren, 4/5
PopMatters - "B-Sides" - September 9 2004
 DAMIEN
RICE
B-Sides
(Vector)
US release date: 3 August 2004
UK release date: 16 August 2004
Rice Ribald
Somewhere there's a woman who needs never hear another Damien Rice song.
Fortunately I am not that woman and these songs are not about me, yet my own
position on the songs of Damien Rice should be made clear: to my mind,
Rice's debut, O, was one of the best two or three albums of last year. Only
the White Stripes' Elephant clearly bested it, while the ordained choice of
the masses, OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below most certainly did not.
Somehow I feel a duty to point this out. I hear howls of protest, and yes,
acknowledge that a comparison of two works that scarcely belong on the same
planet as being somewhat fatuous. Still, I wonder if anyone who inked-in
Outkast for "Album of the Year" happened to notice, once they'd blown
through two discs of studio wizardry and smoke and mirrors, how many actual
songs were on that double disc set? Three? Four? And at best, was any of it
really much more than Prince Redux anyway?
O was a triumph of the songwriter's craft, and anyone who found themselves
lost in the tumult of a failing relationship last year, locked indoors with
O on repeat for an endless successions of days, will likely side with me on
this. O took an eternal and over-burdened theme -- love gone sour -- and
made of it something fresh, something at once pared-down, simple, and yet
emotionally complex. With this work, Rice added a page to the catalogue of
romantic despair, creating a new, present-day Blue. While the pop media
busily engaged itself in re-discovering a "lost classic" (doomed balladeer
Nick Drake), O heralded the arrival of a more contemporary classic, one that
came with little fanfare beyond word-of-mouth.
Word-of-mouth being what it is however, O took a while to get around. In
fact, "The Blower's Daughter", one of the signature songs from the album,
first hit the UK charts as early as 2001, and the full-length record was
released in Britain less than a year later. By the time of its distribution
in the States a further year along, even the most recent material was almost
three years old. Rice has criss-crossed the country these past 12 months,
performing to considerable acclaim, but curiously, any sign of new songs has
failed to materialize. While no one would begin to question his work ethic
and dedication to performing, doubts regarding a successful follow-up have
been mounting, and they are unlikely to be quelled by the latest CD release
-- an overblown EP offering B-sides and rarities.
Scott Fitzgerald once suggested that writers experience one or two
earth-shattering emotional events over the course of their lives, and that
all of their material springs, in a fashion, from those few events. Given
the personal nature of Damien Rice's only full-length release to date, one
begins to wonder whether he's struggling for inspiration outside of his own
deepest experiences. Over the space of several months, I saw him play live
(superbly) twice in New York City, but I was surprised on the second
occasion to witness a set almost identical to the first. The running order
of songs changed, but I anticipated a new song or two somewhere along the
way, or at least a work-in-progress, and neither one materialized.
The meat of this new B-sides collection was already released in Britain as
the Woman Like A Man EP, and versions of these songs have also been
available for some time at www.damienrice.com. "Woman Like A Man" is
certainly the most complete offering, bristling with energy and emotion as
it traces a familiar pattern of destruction between an emotionally reckless
woman and a weak-willed man. Neither character is able to resist the
primitive force that continually draws them together, connecting the
addictive nature of desire -- "I need a hit / Want to wait / Suck it up /
Cum" -- with the helpless remorse of aftermath -- "How familiar / We're bad
/ What we do / Stupid fools." In common with "The Proffessor" it reveals the
more ribald side of its author, which is doubtless one reason why both songs
failed to make the album proper in spite of exploring the same emotional
vein.
"The Professor" lacks the maturity of Rice's best work ("Loving is good if
your dick's made of wood"), and "Lonelily" lacks weight for all of it's
acuity of emotion. '"Moody Mooday,' as the title suggests, is purely
contemplative, and then the collection is rounded out with a re-hash of
three album tracks. The version of "Delicate" performed here, recorded live
in Dublin, is surprisingly subdued, but more damaging is a fragment from the
original demo for "Volcano". Not only does the release of such a meager
scrap suggest desperation on behalf of a record company awaiting new
material, but, given that the demo is specifically dated -- 1997 -- it more
disturbingly suggests that the gap between old material and new is even more
prolonged than we imagined.
All of which conspires to serve doubt. Rice has charm to spare, and a talent
of considerable warmth. His live performances bare all this out, and his
commitment to his art is unquestioned. Yet with each passing month the
prospect of a second album becomes increasingly tricky, and of course, the
pantheon is littered with artists capable of only a single moving statement.
There's no dishonor in that perhaps, but one can only hope that O doesn't
end up a sole lost classic, excavated by pop archaeologists twenty years
from now.
— 9 September 2004
PopMatters
- Philadelphia - September 30 2003
DAMIEN RICE
10 September 2003: The Theatre of Living Arts - Philadelphia
by Michael Christopher
Damien Rice is supposed to be, by all
accounts, a singer-songwriter -- nothing more, nothing less. Sure, his
record is probably the best of the genre released in the States this year,
but live, it's usually a laidback affair when it comes to these guys. On the
opening night of his most recent U.S. trek, anticipation of soft strumming,
poignant lyrics and mellow moments was high, as was a bit of disappointment
that Lisa Hannigan, whose vocals throughout O provide the perfect balance to
Rice's yearnings, wasn't going to make the trip for this leg of the tour.
For over a year now though, Damien Rice has completely defied any
expectations placed upon him. He's got a record out on an independent label,
no radio airplay except towards the far left of the dial, and yet, he sells
out an entire stateside jaunt, and on this night, he put on the greatest
rock and roll show that the Theater of Living Arts has seen since the Afghan
Whigs blew the doors off in 1999.
"The Professor" began things light-heartedly enough, as Rice sang about a
"dick made of wood," and spoke in a stoned-out tone relating to a lyric
about weed, eliciting many laughs from the sold out crowd. Then he hit one
of the many effects pedals on his acoustic guitar, ignited the song into
rocked out overdrive, leaving the audience in complete shock. By the time
the Rice brought things back down into an imitation of a drunken Frenchman,
it was apparent that this was not going to be your typical Ryan Adams-type
show. Taking nothing away from the studio versions, Hannigan wasn't missed
greatly, as her parts were improvised over or simply sung by Rice.
The music wove back and forth between extremes all night, constantly keeping
those in attendance on guard. "Cold Water", one of the deepest and most
powerful tracks from O, began after a request from Rice to turn the lights
completely off was met. In the quiet and eerie darkness of the TLA, the
focus was solely on the words, until, as the song ascended, the stage lights
blasted on at their brightest, aimed directly at the crowd, blinding them.
It was an experience like no other, as the sense of sight was paralyzed
until the lights slowly dimmed and the music quietly descended. Then, when
it seemed nothing could be more intense, Rice went into a jaw dropping
Buckley-esque version of "Halleluiah".
These simple but effective theatrics dotted other songs. As "Cheers Darlin'"
wound down, Rice drew long on a bottle of Sierra Nevada to punctuate each
line, taking the role of the character of the piece (ostensibly Rice
himself), who becomes more drunk with each thought of the girl he loves in
the arms of someone else. The most effective tool though, other than the
multitude of pedals at his feet, was the distortion microphone, which was
slotted along with the regular one, allowing Rice to switch effortlessly
between simple singing to a fuzzed out scream.
More than simple supporting cast, the rest of the band shone right along
with Rice. Vyvienne Long, ravishing in a flowing white dress that seemed one
with her long blonde hair, demurely played cello, until the rest of the band
walked off for a quick break, whereupon she did a furiously paced version of
"Purple Haze" that enthralled as much as it drew laughs of amazement.
Drummer Tomo, lightly brushing the snare or rapping his fingertips ever so
slightly across the cymbals, atmospherically created a place inside of the
subdued sequences of the songs, while he sat to the right front of the
stage, as opposed to the rear. His accompanying vocals didn't quite make up
for Hannigan being missing, but they lent a surprising depth to the songs,
freeing Rice up to either rock out or play with the vocals. Tomo has such a
rapport with Rice, that when he is flailing away during the heaviest parts,
the two of them, eyes locked intently, look as if they are going to leap at
each other. Rice does a better Thom Yorke than Thom Yorke does these days,
convulsing and contorting his reed-like body until it is one with his
guitar; frenzied movements like these led him to smash the neck of it into
Tomo's cymbals over and over again on "Face".
In juxtaposition with the rest of the night, Rice then calmly tuned his
guitar, offhandedly noting that it was a necessary result of "that thing
over there," cocking his head towards Tomo and the recovering cymbal. He
then took to the very lip of the stage, sans microphone, and sang the first
half of "Eskimo", before spearheading another sonic explosion and ambling
off the stage.
When the encore began, Rice let on that the Sierra Nevadas were beginning to
take effect.
"I'm pissed," he started before taking it back. "Well, not pissed, but
pretty fucking merry! I don't even feel like I'm at a gig anymore -- I'm
just like... whatever."
He then told a story about a man he met before the show, who was hanging
outside of the back door of the TLA all day. It turned out that it was a
security guard for the venue, a six-foot-something, close to 300 pound
African-American guy named "Bear" whom Damien wanted to have join him
onstage for a rendition of "Stand By Me". Bear was reluctant, and other than
the chorus he didn't really know the words, mostly adding the last line of
each verse, but was amazing nonetheless, providing such a bellowing vocal
contrast to the earnestness of Rice. It was one of those magical moments, a
feeling that you were witnessing something special, akin to when Jack White
walked out onstage during the Strokes' encore at Radio City Music Hall last
year for "New York City Cops" to lay down a blistering solo. It couldn't be
recreated, and if it were, it would never have the same effect as when it
happened the first time.
A deafening applause followed the exit of Bear and the shy minstrel he
brought with him, but Rice refused to leave the stage. "We should've walked
off right now, end on a high note...but I have no sense of what's good right
now," he said. "At this point, we should leave you wanting more, come see us
next time, thank you very much, have a good night...but we're not stopping.
You can go home if you want. The gig is over. If you are reviewing the show
-- stop. This is not part of the show. We're just not going to leave the
stage."
After another Leonard Cohen cover, a bit of Radiohead's "Creep", and a
couple more songs from O, nearly three hours had passed. The audience was
left dazed, depleted and wanting more. The idea of a sullen and hushed toned
singer songwriter show be damned -- Damien Rice is spectacularly not of that
vein, at least not anymore.
— 30 September 2003
Sydney Morning Herald - October 2004
Damien Rice, Metro
By Bruce Elder
October 22, 2004
October 19
There has always been a problem with terminology when it comes to singers
who write their own songs and perform them on acoustic guitar.
Singer/songwriter? Folk-influenced?
What if these performers, like Damien Rice, sometimes play so damned loud,
and employ such a barrage of experimental backing tapes, that they sound
like a one-man answer to the Blizzard of Oz?
What if their material is predominantly about the nature of love and ranges
from delicately crafted ballads (The Blower's Daughter) to wry
eccentricities (Cheers Darlin') - and there isn't a folk song in sight?
And where is the category for a singer who, leaving his cellist (Vyvienne
Long) and female vocal sidekick (Lisa Hannigan) at home in Ireland, calls
upon the services of Missy Higgins, this year's ARIA winner for the best pop
release, and then sings a wildly eccentric, acoustic duet version of
Prince's When Doves Cry?
Damien Rice seems to be in the business of breaking rules. On the surface he
is a man with a slightly hippie disposition who writes melancholy songs
about the heartache and pain of love and who has a finely-honed
understanding of the power of musical light and shade.
He moves effortlessly from near silence to roars of distorted sound and,
within a song, he can move from violent, passionate strumming to almost
whispered vocals.
Given the right environment - and the Metro was a perfect venue - he is
extraordinary. He can silence a capacity audience by nothing more
sophisticated than playing and singing very softly, as he did on the
evening's opening song The Blower's Daughter Part 2. When he sang the
wonderfully eccentric Eskimo and his gorgeously tender hit Cannonball, the
audience, without any prompting, sang along with passion and genuine
affection.
Without the enriching melancholia of Long's cello and Hannigan's vocals,
Rice finds himself radically reinterpreting his material. The opera singer
on Eskimo is replaced by Rice himself singing in Finnish. The strings on
Amie become backing tapes played so loud and with such distortion that the
building vibrates. He reveals himself as a true experimenter who belongs
much more comfortably in the Tim and Jeff Buckley camp than with the pop
smoothness of, say, David Gray.
Missy Higgins was greeted with wild enthusiasm when she performed a short
set before Rice's appearance, but she joined him on Volcano and was happy to
gulp down a few glasses of wine to add verisimilitude to a funny, sexy
rendition of Cheers Darlin'.
Post Gazette - April 13 2004
Music Review: Damien Rice and Frames deliver moody show
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
By John Young
You wouldn't have known that singer/guitarist Damien Rice was opening his
Sunday night show at the Byham Theater with his song "Delicate." The song
had been totally reimagined with new lyrics, a new melody, even a new tempo.
No sooner had Rice deconstructed the chorus, though, than he suddenly kicked
into the song as listeners know it from his "O" album. Full of magisterial
sweep thanks to Vyvienne Long's fluid cello lines and Lisa Hannigan's
quietly intense backing vocals that she sang just off-mike, the tune became
big, warm, mysterious, enveloping. Rice and his four-piece band delivered
music in much the same vein over 17 songs and 100 minutes.
At times, the mood could be lighthearted. Rice joked that Long rides him
about repeating the same introductory stories for songs, so Rice let her do
the honors for "Eskimo." The audience chuckled along as Long gave
"introduction 25-C," but Rice got the last laugh when he deadpanned that
Long had the story right but for the wrong song.
Mostly, though, the tone of the show was as quietly melancholy as Rice's
material, like the sinuous "Volcano," stern "Baby Sister" and searching "Amie."
Fittingly, Rice closed his set with the haunting ballad "Cold Water," the
lights onstage fading until the band concluded the song in near-total
darkness. The dark mood continued during a four-song encore that ended with
Hannigan's re-worded mostly a cappella version of "Silent Night" while Rice
sat prayerfully beside her just listening.
The Frames frontman Glen Hansard joked during his group's opening slot that
they had "planned on playing a depressing, lonely set ... but we're just too
[expletive] happy." Indeed, even lyrical bummers like "Lay Me Down" and
"Fake" were brightened by Hansard's sharp, smiling delivery and deepened by
the Irish band's hushed, then howling, musical dynamics.
Delivering a show of emotional extremes and deeply involving music, Rice and
The Frames elegantly and powerfully wound down a chilly Easter night.
Having only witnessed a brief live
performance from the Glastonbury acoustic sessions on television, I wasn’t
sure if the messy haired Irish man that I had seen on the screen was really
going to live up to the rave reviews from the national and international
press. I’m very weary of critics so a good review doesn’t mean shit.
The doors didn’t open for what felt like an age and the autumn evening
wasn’t very forgiving. When we were finally let in (an hour late) everyone
whose limbs were still working after the freezing session outside crowded
around the bar.
Read the review
 Damien Rice-O CD
"Magnificently packaged in a CD-sized hardcover book filled with personal artwork, lyrics, and photos, Damien Rice's debut full-length, O, is nothing less than a work of genius, a perfect cross between Ryan Adams and David Gray and a true contender for one of the best albums of 2003. This Irish singer/songwriter works with impassioned folk songs that move from stripped-down to grandly orchestrated in a heartbeat. The production is reminiscent of Songs of Leonard Cohen - simple guitars, vocals, and then those swelling strings, all of which sound like they were recorded right in the same room. Rice is master of what critic/ranter Richard Meltzer called "the unknown tongue" - basically the musical equivalent of the "punctum" in photos, it's that thing that grabs a hold of you, the detail that makes it happen. For example, on "Delicate" the strings lift the spare folk song to the heavens at just the moment that makes the song soar - Meltzer might call it the "folk tongue" or maybe even the "epic tongue." The magnificent, melancholy, optimistic, longing, almost magical "The Blower's Daughter" comes in immediately as the previous song, "Volcano," ends - same thing with the song that follows - which gives the album a broad, operatic quality. The gentle "Cannonball," the bright strumming and surreal feedback on "Amie," the distant piano and oceanic harmonies (not to mention drowning, backwards vocals) on the duet, Cold Water" - the entire record makes the empty highway less lonely, the sunshine a little warmer, and life a little more poetic. Then there's the actual opera singer doing backup vocal duties on "Eskimo" - a song of redemption that is Syd Barrett, is Skip Spence, is Grandaddy and is Mercury Rev and everything that implies. What a metaphor for Rice's entire hopelessly beautiful record - one long angelic hymn for an insane world with the intimacy of a friend playing guitar in your living room and the grandeur of Sigur Rós."
Charles Spano, AMG
Another Irishman likely to captivate young minds like old David Gray, with much of the same wanderlust in his songwriting and much of the same homegrown simplicity that sneaks up on you when you're least expecting it, Damien Rice is a welcome addition to a growing stable of formidable songwriters. Like Gray, Rice has a touch of Van Morrison's epic grandeur in him and he isn't afraid to chase a song into the mystic and stretch a sentiment with massive dynamics (which coming from these humble environs is quite a stretch). The cello's become an instant indicator of dark mood and deep sentiment and balances out Rice's soft acoustic guitar. Recorded in homes with mobile recording units, the intimate sound perfectly mirrors Rice's songwriterly intentions. It's a modern blues where the form is broken but the emotion plays out the same. One listen to "Volcano" immediately opens up this world and suggests you join it before it passes you by. Rob O'Connor
Sadness and beauty
On O, a first own-produced album, filled up of a resigned sadness, Damien Rice delivers tearing ballades folk with autumnal splendour. Endowed Outrageusement, young Irish reveals a writing of a remarkable smoothness which exceeds the guns of the kind unceasingly. Sumptuous. Outside, it drizzle, the rain sweeps the panes gently. Behind the translucent fog such luminous smoke, the setting sun burns similar with a fire, is spread in sheaf of flame and blood. I slip the album on the turntable. Gently, in its turn, the music fills up the part of a hot light. Full with colors, it marries with wonder the autumnal and misty colours of the landscape. Declining light, sheets in flame, trees blurred. Veiled by these imaginary fires, the air thickens, the ground loses its consistency. The music convenes the phantoms of late loves: eyes in turn softened and obscured or surprisingly alive in the whirling light. Convulsées shades. Strange feelings. Some old melodies like the world. Crowned destitution of the folk. Damien Rice however did not invent anything but this soft inclined album, with its changing beauty, reveals an infinite richness of colors and feelings. A sad grace and nonchalante whose distracting charm is due for much to the voice quivering of Damien Rice, with the brittleness of one phrased which captures the least torments, the least asperities of an intimacy moderately revealed. Pains, pressures, hopes. Like tears between the fingers, the words of Damien Rice slip with infinite languors on the delicate ones and discrete arrangements of cords. Full with funeral harmonies, the music, hardly underlined by a throbbing violoncello and of luminous violins, rolls on poignant melodies, leaves sometimes wood cold and naked for flights despaired before dying in a murmur. Thus delicious Delicate, Older Chests and Amie. Scented odorous acoustic guitars, hemmed delicate tangles of voice, the daydreams of this solitary walker borrow the sinuous paths of the errance in love and convene painful memories. Its music never denies the ombrageux side of the life and the majority of the pieces have here a disillusioned dimension. However, never plaintive, Damien Rice shows of a sensitivity, obvious and disarming sincerity. And then, on felted Volcano and Cold toilets, the infinitely gracious stamp of LISA Hannigan comes to bathe and soften its diaphanous light this underwood where one likes to lose oneself. In all end of album, on a delicious canticle of Christmas, his voice falls in the tender ones and cottony flakes and covers these melancholic persons musical landscapes of one alleviating coat of snow. Certainly these sad evenings ago where one will think that O was not precisely the disc to be slipped on the turntable. But moderate, sober and delicate, this album has the simplicity and the obviousness of the beauty. Marc Sauvaud
Personnel: Damien Rice (vocals, guitar, clarinet, piano, bass, drums, percussion); Lisa Hannigan (vocals); Nicolas Dodd (conductor); Mark Kelly (electric guitar); Vivienne Long (cello); Jen Meunier (piano); Shane Fitzsimons (bass); Tomo (drums, percussion); Conor Donovan (timpani, percussion). The beginning of the 21st century found the UK offering a host of new Nick Drakes like Ed Harcourt, Badly Drawn Boy, Tom McRae, etc. On the surface, Damien Rice is not too far removed from them with his intense vocal style, confessional songs, and sparse, acoustic guitar-based arrangements. Upon closer inspection of his debut album O, however, he seems to be more aligned with the likes of David Gray; that's not to say that he mixes folk and electronica, but just that he incorporates old-school singer-songwriter influences in the service of something original. There's a hushed, intimate feel to O, and most of the songs are delivered in a delicate, fragile tone that's perfectly accompanied by the bare-bones production. Tasteful strings and other touches are added here and there, but strictly on an as-needed basis. The closer "Eskimo" erupts into a (literally) operatic climax, and there's a bonus cut touching on an anomalous rock feel, but otherwise this is prime late-night music for your next Leonard Cohen costume party. Editorial reviews...On his evocative debut, O, the Irish singer-songwriter shift from opera-infused ballads to delicate folk compositions with aplomb... - Rating: A
Mojo (10/03, p.107) - 4 stars out of 5 - ...Rice establishes an extraordinary intimacy here....This is gorgeous stuff and, one suspects, that the Irishman can only get better... Entertainment Weekly (07/18/2003)
Neumu - June 11 2003Irish Song Poet Damien Rice's O Released In U.S.
San Francisco — O, the exquisite debut album from critically lauded Irish singer/songwriter Damien Rice (who, in the UK, has been compared to Bob Dylan) was released in the U.S. this week on the Vector label.
The album is an often-gentle lullaby, a singer/songwriter tour de force that mixes gentle acoustic guitars and Rice's at-times-conversational vocals with string arrangements and ethereal support vocals from Irish singer Lisa Hannigan, who also duets with Rice on a number of songs including "Volcano." The artist has an unusual perspective on writing. "I know they are not the truth," Rice said of his songs, during a recent interview before a San Francisco performance, "in that they are truthful expressions of how I was feeling, but just because I might have been feeling a certain way about somebody, doesn't necessarily mean I was right."
Produced by Rice, O was first released in Ireland on the artist's own drm label in February 2002; it quickly went double platinum (30,000 copies sold), was voted Best Album and Best Debut Album by the Hot Press Readers Poll, and was nominated for three Meteor Island music awards. Last July it was released in the UK, where it received critical raves; the Sunday Telegraph called O "a fantastic debut,.. an absolute triumph of great songwriting and honest performance."
Dublin-born Rice, who was lead singer of the Irish band Juniper until 1999 (he says that at the time he was "burnt out with the music business," recorded O over a two-year period in a mobile studio donated by renowned James Bond film composer/arranger David Arnold (who produced Björk's "Play Dead" and is also Rice's second cousin) — in Paris, London, Ireland, and wherever else inspiration struck. During a recent interview he told Neumu he wanted the freedom to create spontaneously and independently, free of the limitations of a traditional recording studio and the servitude imposed by being under contract to a record label. Obligated only to his own creativity and personal aesthetic ambitions, he was able to craft an album of rich and abundant sonic details, not compromised by the pressures of release deadlines and the potentially inhibiting oversight of a producer other than himself.
The musicians Rice used for the album are a cosmopolitan and esteemed group: pianist Jean Meunir of Paris, drummer TOMO of NYC, English cellist Vyvienne Long, Hannigan (who worked closely with Rice on every aspect of the project), opera singer Doreen Curran, members of the London Symphony Orchestra, and monks from an abbey in Tuscany, not far from where Rice lived for a year (and where he wrote many of the songs that appear on O). The monks served as consultants on the making of authentic Gregorian chants for one of the album's stand-out songs, "Coldwater."
Though Arnold arranged for Rice to make use of Air Studios in London, in which a week and ten grand were spent recording several songs for O, Rice was dissatisfied with the results, and after recording with the mobile studio, opted to mix the album himself on a simple 8-track machine back home in Ireland.
The album packaging is quite unusual, resembling a short book. "With this album I just wanted to make a book of art that had a similar feel and intimacy as the songs," he explained. "I wanted to make an old-style hardback book that was a material cover, stamped on the front, pictures and drawings, and a few little words, bits and pieces here and there. Just for me. It's just like wanting to have an artistic expression of what else is in here. There's a CD of music in the back and an artistic expression which hopefully matches, or fits — encases in fact — that music in a nice way."
As for why he titled the album O, Rice explained during an interview with the Irish webzine Cluas last year, "The reason why it fits for me is 'cause like with relationships, they go round and round in circles, and you never learn from mistakes, and it's always the same thing over and over. So many of the songs are like that as well, about the same mistakes, that whole thing we do in Life — just going around in circles. And CDs go round and round as well. I mean, fuck it! 'O' just seemed to capture what the album was."
Rice will be appear on "Late Show With David Letterman" on Friday, June 13. For more info on Rice, including tour dates, check out his Web site. — Nicole Cohen [Wednesday, June 11, 2003]
And so it is, just like we knew it would be. Only it's even better. Anyone who has ever been to a Damien Rice gig will no doubt have waited for February 1st with great anticipation, as the first time you hear his voice wrap itself around songs like Eskimo and Cold Water you don't forget it. Just like when he's onstage, Rice throws himself completely into every word and his heart is buried deep in every chord.
Delicate has that same pure beauty that greeted you the first time you heard the line "why do you sing hallelujah if it means nothing to you" rise up from an intense Damien Rice live set. And that intensity is transferred effortlessly to O. The brooding bass-line of Volcano melts perfectly into the opening line of The Blower's Daughter. It was arguably the finest single released last year, but on the album it works even better, as a part of something bigger and more complex. Like a single stanza in a poem it reveals so much but yet when you read the poem in it's entirety it can mean something completely different.
The album is understated and quiet for the most part, so much so, that when it does get loud it makes even more of an impact, such as the stunning I Remember. Split in two halves, Lisa Hannigan opens with a lonely declaration of love, before Rice enters and the song explodes with anger. The eerie and powerful Cold Water drips in desperation. Amie is soaked in emotion and strings that soar, while the tenderly uplifting Eskimo tells so many stories of Rice's journey towards this record. It's not over just yet though with a couple of equally beguiling moments left for the listener to discover.
The first time you listen to O, the thing that hits you most is the intensity of the record, with so many feelings packed into every song. Damien Rice provides further evidence of the great music that is to be found in Ireland, but even after last year's myriad of top quality home-grown releases, O delivers possibly the finest Irish record of the last 12 months. Music like this doesn't come round very often but you know when you've found it because you feel it when they take it away.
Buy this album now at Road Records. Go on. You know you want to. Michelle Dalton
Neumu - July 11 2003Damien Rice In The 'Here And Now'
San Francisco — Damien Rice is a man questioning his faith in love. "You know when you've found it, because you feel it when they take it away," the 29-year-old Irishman sings with a gentle Zen spontaneity and enlightened sadness, characteristic of the style throughout his self-produced debut, O. The critically acclaimed album was released in the United States in late June, after a year out in Ireland and the UK. O is a song cycle that traces the arc of a relationship.
Rice, who plays guitar, piano, bass, clarinet and percussion, has turned his troubled heart into a thoughtful, soulful folk-rock album that has won him awards in his own country (three Meteor Music Awards for songwriting), and rave reviews in the UK and, most recently, the U.S. "I don't want to be famous," Rice said, attempting to explain himself during an interview at San Francisco's Café Du Nord, a dark little basement club with blood-red velvet curtains, a mahogany bar, and crystal chandeliers that give it the feel of a brothel from the late 1800s.
Still, Rice's resistance to fame has not stopped him from appearing on the "Late Show with David Letterman" and opening for Coldplay. "I do want to play music," Rice emphasized. "And I don't have any fear with regard to the music, where it goes, because I have learned it goes better if I follow it, rather than me deciding where it goes."
Thus far, the critics seem too agree with the results of this attitude. Rice has gotten rave write-ups in such high-profile publications as Newsweek, Rolling Stone, the L.A. Times and the New Yorker. While Newsweek called O, "An out-and-out gorgeous CD, so full of undiluted, unfalsified emotions that it verges on open-heart surgery," the L.A. Times described Rice as "Nothing short of a complete package of art, personality and presence on a level with Jeff Buckley or Thom Yorke." A writer for What's On in London enthused, "Only Bob Dylan comes close to such cracked passion."
Rice radiates a boyish bashfulness and mischievous energy. Though not tall, he has a tremendous presence. Speaking in a discreet Irish accent, he used the word "passion" several times to describe a certain type of inspirational exasperation that fuels his art. Sometimes he delivered the word with such a force that he nearly doubled himself over. He sat animatedly, poised to pounce when an idea that resonated with him passed by. Clear marine-green eyes grew rounder, and his fit vegetarian body larger, in relation to his excitement. He is both sensitive and scrappy, in looks and demeanor — a dark-blond grunge poet.
Sitting at a small round table near the back of the club after sound check, Rice spoke passionately about a life journey he has been on that has allowed him to find success making music on his own terms: "I got to where I wanted to be, and it wasn't where I wanted to be!"
'The Dream Betrayed Me' His first band, the hard-rock group Jupiter, were signed to PolyGram Records and had a hit in Ireland in the mid-'90s. Rice was suddenly on the way to becoming the rock star he had fantasized about being while a teenager in high school. Only problem was, he was very unhappy. "The dream betrayed me," he said.
Promises were made to him by people in the music industry that were not kept, he said. He felt that he was losing control of his music and his life to music-business executives. Disillusioned and depressed, he decided to do the inconceivable: he would quit the music business altogether, leave the band that comprised his closest friends since childhood, and move to Tuscany, Italy, to grow tomatoes.
Once in Tuscany, he embraced a new personal philosophy: "I'm just going to do whatever it is I do, as opposed to planning what I do and having an idea about where I want to be."
The ambitious self-challenge to stay unambitious yielded an unexpected epiphany. One day while sitting on a hill overlooking the fields below, he began wondering what exactly it was about Tuscany that made it so beautiful. What he suddenly realized is that it was the symmetry of the fields, the precise spacing of the olive trees in the groves — the way it all fit together that produced such a harmonious effect on the eye. He knew then it was not the music industry that was the problem, it was his problem with control. "I just ran into [in Italy] what I ran away from — me having a difficulty with form, but being completely attracted to form at the same time," he said.
This insight was quite liberating, Rice said. He hit the road, spending a year bumming around Europe, playing his songs on street corners before returning to Dublin. Finally, he was ready to make a record on his own terms, for himself, without stars in his eyes and without obligation to a corporation with commercial objectives.
When asked "Why make a record? Why not just play in your living room if you had such a strong aversion to re-entering the music world?", he replied, "It's an experiment. It feels like the natural thing to do. I did not think many people would like this record at all. I decided this was the only record I was going to make; I'm not going to get involved with the music business again. So I'm just gonna make this, make a beautiful cover for it, and just say 'If anybody likes it, you can have it.' [It was] an experiment to let this thing out of me that I wanted to do."
A Story Tale of a Relationship on the Rocks Once drawn into Rice's music, like one caught unexpectedly in a rip tide, it's best not to struggle against the album's emotional currents. O is the tale of a relationship on the rocks: sweet, self-destructive naïveté swaying in manic musical winds. Compassion suddenly turns to desperation, acceptance to cynicism, then a gale of soaring spiritual hope that love will be reborn from the devastation of passion. Surveying the ruins from his soul's shore, first quietly, then with the anger of a dark Irish rage, Rice rummages through the debris, looking for signs of life. He is accompanied on his search, and on the album, by the tragic romantic voice of Lisa Hannigan, the mysterious muse credited by Rice for her "huge help" on the project.
O's lyrics raise more questions than they answer, but after listening to the album, (and seeing him live, if you're lucky enough to witness his performance), you're left with the refreshed understanding that comes after putting a complex question to bed, and waking up with equanimity. On the song "Volcano" he admits to Hannigan like an apologetic lover, "You step a little closer to me, so close that I can't see at all," sadly concluding, "I can't take my mind off of you, 'til I find somebody new."
Rice's antidote for overindulgent self-scrutiny is found in these simple, straightforward statements from the heart. His songwriting has a quality of "the truth will set you free," which he relies on again and again to keep this "spiritual" music grounded. The transitions between the songs are deliberately ambiguous, creating a stream of consciousness effect. Sometimes, Rice is serenading Hannigan more than singing with her. Oftentimes, he is menacing and bitter, projecting the fury of frustrated desire and the defeated fatalism of knowing his lyrical prayers for forgiveness and deliverance will not be answered.
A few times, Rice and Hannigan communicate with such lush solidarity and precise authenticity and pitch it pierces your heart and might even make you cry. He seems to be gently unfolding a tale of his truth, looking back on the making of the record and their relationship, allowing her to whisper her side of the story. In the tormented, confessional, and strangely inspirational "Coldwater," Rice embellishes the song with a both sinister and soothing Gregorian chant (inspired by the monks at the monastery he lived near in Italy) which anchors the song's question — "Am I lost with you?" — and supports the drowning sensation the melody evokes. "Lord, can you hear me now? Or am I lost?!" he pleads.
The religious metaphors that swirl in the whirlpool of Rice's memory spiral towards surrender to their traditional symbolism, but what triumphs here is the conviction that it is the mysteries one can never solve that are the most honest and fulfilling sources of hope. By the end of the album, he seems to be floating in a sea of serenity, at peace with his personal spirituality. He has embraced a gospel that offers no answers for himself or anyone else: "The only thing that is solid for me is the realness of just never knowing where you're going to be, what your going to do, and loving that," he exclaimed.
'Just Walk Down There At Night' Before his show in San Francisco, Rice said that if one really wants to understand the "feel" of his music, go to Killiney Beach in Dublin. "It's a stony beach, where the waves are quite crashy," he said. "Just constant motion. Just walk down there at night and listen to the record — it just makes sense then."
He could not explain his songs that evening, perhaps aware of the inevitability of diminution trying to relate to another one's inner perception of the reality, of something you feel rather than see. He preferred instead to suggest politely to the people who would listen to his "experiment," that if they insist on trying to understand anything about it, focus on the emotion of the record, not the mechanics. "It's like lovemaking," he said of his songs. "Everything in life for me that I absolutely love has exactly that same essence."
Although he's a fan of such soulful artists as Nina Simone and Leonard Cohen, Rice has said that he doesn't listen to music much. It wasn't until his teenage years that he decided he wanted to make music. "I know I always sang," he explained in his official bio. "In school I was always in the choir, but I didn't have one of these classic upbringings, like Joni Mitchell records playing all the time and my parents being hippies. My dad plays, so there was always that, but it was never a musical household from the point of view of having loads of records in the house, or music playing all the time.
"My dad had one Dylan record and I listened to 'Blowing in the Wind' on it," Rice continued. "But that was the only song I connected with when I was a kid. I used to spend a lot of time outdoors. I had a dog and I used to fish a lot. Down by the river and taking the dog for a walk — I used to spend tons of time like that on my own. The time the music came into my life was when my elder sister had a boyfriend who played guitar. Then girls came into my life, and fishing kinda stopped. I picked up the guitar at that time, and once I had something to play while I was singing, it just never stopped. I used to find a lot of peace just writing something and playing it over and over to myself in my room. I was always getting into trouble for not doing my homework."
O was recorded, over a two-year period, using a small, mobile studio his cousin, the producer/arranger/artist David Arnold (best known for scoring recent James Bond films), donated to his effort. With this flexibility, Rice was able to immerse himself in his creative process as it flowed through him, be it in his kitchen in Dublin or on the streets of Paris. To help him flesh out the music, Rice, who produced the album, enlisted some of his favorite musicians from around the globe: New York drummer TOMO, French pianist Jean Meunir, cellist Vivienne Long, and opera singer Doreen Curran. Together with country-mate Lisa Hannigan, they will join him on his first world tour starting this September.
At one point, with $10,000 of funding from Arnold, he tried mixing the album at the famous Air Studios in London, and did a bit of recording there as well, but was not pleased with the results. (Just one song, "Amie," from those sessions ended up on O.) Frustrated, he returned to Dublin and mixed the record himself on the 8-track machine that he used for recording most of O. He also chose to release the album independently, forming Damien Rice Music in 2002; in Ireland and the UK the album has sold over 30,000 copies. In the U.S., Rice passed on major-label offers, instead licensing O to the new indie label, Vector Recordings (Vector has a distribution deal with Time Warner AOL's WEA division).
In the U.S., O got its first airplay last October after David Gray's management team sent a copy of the album to Nic Harcourt, music director at the Santa Monica station KCRW-FM. After Harcourt played songs from the album on his influential show, "Morning Becomes Eclectic," Rice became the station's most requested artist, according to the Los Angeles Times. At the time, O wasn't even available in the U.S.
A Road That Leads Through Hell
Rice presented his San Francisco fans with a scorching performance. That night at crowded and chaotic Café du Nord, he performed the songs of O as if he were taking part in an exorcism; his passion quieted even the loudest drunk at the bar. His fierce and fearless intimacy with the sell-out crowd was heroic, as if for the first time he was bravely standing down a dragon that had possessed him for too long. He sang the story of a time and place of overwhelming mood, revisited from the safe emotional distance of the stage. Abstract, yet familiar, themes lingered throughout the sets; stanzas of an epic musical poem.
Like Dante, Damien reminded us that the way out of our dark forests is the road that leads through Hell. Languidly haunting and heart-bruising melodies, so primal they felt awakened from the darkness of an ancient time, led us down the lonesome path Rice had cleared for us to follow him that night. They floated heavily in a "halfway to dawn" kind of rhythm and tempo, as the sensitive songwriter Billy Strayhorn had once so elegantly defined the perfect mysterious atmosphere for honest expression.
Smoldering incense gave the stage the sensuous aura of an exotic church altar. The sweet-smelling smoke defined a physical space for the psychic place between life and death, both asleep and awake, a fully absorbed consciousness in perfect harmony with the moment. Not even a group of inebriated fans singing "Hallelujah!" could break the spell, or Rice's concentration. He performed his lovely acoustic album with the ambiance of a fluid and powerfully nostalgic, candlelit dream, transforming before our eyes his aching heart from feeling to form.
Rice has created a debut album describing his bittersweet emancipation from the grips of passionate love. He titled the CD O because "like with relationships [CD's] go round and round in circles and you never learn from your mistakes, and it's always the same thing over and over. So many of the songs are like that as well, about the same mistakes, that whole thing we do in life — just going around in circles."
It appears as if the album enabled a catharsis that will be explored on his next project. "[These songs] express that cycle that I went through," he said. "In that, it happened here, and then, Oh God! It happened here — a song here and a song here.... And Oh God! These are all saying the same thing!! It's like I've gone through that cycle over and over in my life...and then the next record feels like that cycle gets pushed off the table and it all gets smashed and you get really pissed off. The next album is really aggressive, really angry."
Regardless of what the future holds for Rice, he is a young man who has searched everywhere for a secure place for his heart to live, and has found his home in the moment. He has had his dream come true, and lived to tell about it. He has traded the desire for fame, fortune and fantastic love for the richer realities of the here and now. "I'm used to having nothing," he said, quietly but intensely. "I've been really happy with nothing, so I'm not worried about anything!" — Nicole Cohen [Friday, July 11, 2003]
On The Verge
Name: Damien Rice
What: Singer/songwriter
They say: 'I told him there's no reason why he shouldn't sell millions of records. It's just in the blood' David Arnold, composer and Rice's cousin
We say: His delicate, stunning songs have both mass appeal and a singular, private charm Things are going badly wrong for Damien Rice. 'I don't want to do this,' he says, looking out of the window of a vegetarian restaurant in west London's dismal Goldhawk Road. 'I don't want to be famous, I don't want to make money, I don't want my photograph taken, I don't like the music industry. I just want to be nobody. Be Damien.' Tragically for the earnest 29-year-old Dublin-born singer/songwriter, his recent low-key performance at the Glastonbury Festival triggered a 500 per cent sales increase for his gorgeous, startling and fragile acoustic album O. The self-released collection, which has already gone double-platinum in Ireland, has recently been licensed by EastWest, who are readying themselves to build on an already bullish profile in the US, where he's recently performed on both David Letterman's talk show and supported Coldplay on tour. He shares management with similarly sorrowful David Gray, and his single 'Volcano' is threatening to, well, erupt. But despite this portentous outlook, Rice appears bright, fizzy and disarmingly charming, a scruff-haired hippie with clear, honest eyes and a belt made out of recycled rope. It's a confidence born of experience. This isn't the first time Rice has been On The Verge. Seven years ago, his band Juniper had an Irish hit with its first single. But the record company refused to release the follow-up, 'Eskimo', claiming it wasn't commercial enough. So he decided to quit. 'When I told the band, who were my friends from the age of 12,' he says, 'I felt so guilty.' So Damien ran away to Tuscany to become a farmer. After two years he found he'd done a lot of thinking, a bit of playing but absolutely no agronomy. So he returned to Ireland and started writing songs again. He borrowed a bit of cash from his father for a basic eight-track recorder and sent a tape of 'The Blower's Daughter' to his second cousin, the film-soundtrack composer and producer David Arnold. He was so taken with it that Arnold financed the recording of O. 'I just have this complete compulsion to make music,' Rice says. 'I can't help myself. My wish is for the album to go out there and do whatever, and be as large or small as it wants. But if it stops selling now, I'll be a happy man.' · 'Volcano' is released on 21 July. Will Storr
The Guardian - Friday, September 26 2003'Britney? She was a pain'
Irish singer/songwriter Damien Rice is about to make it very big - even if he doesn't really want to. By Alexis Petridis
There is something strangely familiar about the set of The Last Call With Carson Daly. Just as first-time visitors to New York are struck by how recognisable the city seems after years of seeing films set in its streets, so the first-time visitor to the set of a major US chat show is liable to note how similar the studio looks to The Larry Sanders Show. Power-dressed female researchers flutter around the show's host, a thick-necked, square-jawed former DJ. There is an unfunny stooge (rapper Biz Markie) and a headset-wearing floor manager issuing technical instructions in a harassed voice. "This is the toss!" he bellows inscrutably. "The direct toss!"
Indeed, the only people who look out of place are the stars of the show. Damien Rice and his band may be top-billed tonight - above American Pie actor Jason Biggs, who is plugging the new Woody Allen film Anything Goes - but you could only identify them as a rock band because they are carrying instruments. They look more like people who have recently emerged from a tent in the Glastonbury festival's Green Field. Elfin backing singer Lisa Hannigan is wearing a pair of threadbare corduroy flares. Her long tresses hang out from underneath a vast woolly hat. Cellist Vyvienne Long sports a pair of sandals and a flowered hippy skirt.
Rice himself is wearing a tattered charity-shop jacket. His equally tattered jeans are held up by what appears to be various lengths of discarded rope. His haircut is downright bizarre - a sort of malnourished, droopy mohican that looks suspiciously like he cut it himself. This, it later transpires, is because he cut it himself, removing his mop of Byronic curls as a protest against his record company over-promoting his debut album, O. They got off lightly. "At one stage, I had half my head shaved and half long," he confides. "I was going to leave it like that."
The haircut is merely the latest stage in Rice's curious and unusual battle to avoid overexposure. He dislikes posing for photographs, preferring to be snapped on the hoof as he goes about his business. And he is similarly intractable on the matter of promotional activities, which he has strictly limited to three a week. This is unheard of: European artists attempting to "break" the US are expected to dutifully press the flesh at any TV show, press interview and in-store record-signing session that will have them.
His behaviour may be odd, but Rice has his reasons. In 1997, he was the lead vocalist in a hotly tipped Irish rock band called Juniper, an experience soured after only two singles by "a combination of things that all came down to not having freedom. Record companies coming into the studio and asking you to be a bit more radio-friendly. I just ended up fighting with everybody and being really unhappy within myself." He quit Juniper, left Ireland and headed for Tuscany, where he planned to "plant vegetables, farm, paint, whatever. After a while, I started getting the itch back for music again. I felt sucked back in, seduced. It was like going back to a woman who beats you or something."
Instead of returning to the Irish rock scene, he resolved to pursue his musical ambitions in a more low-key way. He became a busker, occasionally performing alongside a man in a red rabbit suit who played Somewhere Over the Rainbow on a ukelele. "I threw everything away and I was happier than I've ever been, so independent, so free," he sighs. "I jumped in a van with two hippy friends, went around Scotland, England, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Holland. It was brilliant. I got to listen to myself sitting on the street when nobody else was listening to me."
He discovered to his surprise that he made more money when he played his own songs rather than cover versions and returned to Ireland, where he recorded O at his home in Celbridge, south Dublin, on an eight-track cassette recorder donated by his cousin, film composer David Arnold. He released it on his own label, later signing to East West in the UK and Vector in the US. "I recorded it with people I randomly met. I met Lisa one night in a cafe. Tomo [the drummer] was a friend of a friend. It's all a big fuckin' accident. There's nothing driving us. No sense of 'If we sell this many records' or 'If we get to play this venue'. The only reason we're doing it is because we happen to enjoy it.
"I used to hate record companies, but now I don't think they're evil, or not necessarily. They're not a threat to me any more. They don't need me and I don't need them to be happy in life. I like to follow my vision for the music through, and not have someone fucking question me about it. If you don't like it, fine, then don't be a part of it. "
However frustrating his new record labels find his behaviour, they clearly want to be part of it. Rice's demands are met, possibly because he is what music business executives call a "no-brainer" - an artist whose eventual fame seems inevitable, who even an idiot would realise is destined for success.
Like David Gray, with whom he shares management, 29-year-old Rice is blessed with the ability to turn commonplace incidents - failing to pull in a pub, gazing at the night sky - into lovely, effortlessly touching songs. O, released last year, is stuffed full of them. It is the sort of album that A&R men dream about. On one level, it is effortlessly commercial and extremely accessible. Low-key, gorgeously melodic and delicately tricked out with strings, O has nothing that will put your dinner-party guests off their chicken tagine. Yet it is never slick or glib; instead, it exudes a guileless, homespun warmth. "The songs just fell out," Rice says, "sitting in the kitchen."
In addition, despite the haircut and the hat, both Rice and duet partner Hannigan are very good-looking, if you like your pin-ups Soil Association Certified. On the Carson Daly Show, Rice's performance of a particularly tender and lovely ballad called The Blower's Daughter is greeted by a hushed reverence, broken only by the regular thump of swooning females hitting the deck. Back home in Ireland, where O has now gone double-platinum, there is much speculation about the exact nature of Rice and Hannigan's relationship. When one Irish rock magazine recently asked Rice whether the evident on-stage chemistry between the two had any basis in real-life romance, they were told to mind their own business at considerable length.
In Britain, his success has been gradual: O has sold by word of mouth. The day after a snatch of his appearance at Glastonbury was televised, its sales rocketed by a staggering 1,000%, and his forthcoming UK tour has sold out. In the US, his progress has been rapid ever since a DJ at a Santa Monica radio station chanced upon a copy of O and began playing it on his breakfast show.
This year, Rice has appeared on every major US talk show, an experience he approaches with an almost heroic nonchalance. Their initial appearance on David Letterman was cancelled because their fellow guest Bruce Willis was "pomping on about how great it was to bomb Saddam for so long that we didn't get time to play". Rice says he was not bothered, largely because he had "never heard of David Letterman in the first place". And when Carson Daly tells him that his rehearsal is "sounding great", Rice squints back at him and smiles, as if he's not entirely certain who Daly is either.
His US gigs are studded with celebrity supporters. Britney Spears turned up in Los Angeles, although her golden endorsement was tarnished when she and her date, actor Colin Farrell, talked all the way through his set: "She was a pain in the arse," frowns Rice.
Today, Daly does everything in his power to promote the album, short of running out into the streets of Manhattan and sticking up posters. Whatever guest is on, Daly finds a means of turning the conversation round from whatever they're meant to be plugging to Damien Rice. This being America, the guests show no consternation at this turn of events and gush on cue. Watching from his dressing room, Rice seems unperturbed. He has his mind on other things - namely, when he can "fall back into being a hippy musician again". Despite his insistence that O's follow-up will be "really ugly, really bitter", that may prove harder than he hopes.
In the people carrier that takes Rice from the TV studio to his sold-out gig, he launches into a characteristic harangue about the pointlessness of celebrity: "Who am I? What the fuck do I know? I haven't got a fucking clue! Most of what I'm saying is bullshit!" At the gig, the audience includes country superstar Faith Hill and actor Glenn Close. The crowd receive Rice and his band rapturously, despite the fact that the set lasts over two hours and contains vast swathes of surprisingly noisy new material.
It seems to bear out another theory formulated by Rice during his busking days and applied to his career as a superstar-in-waiting. "The thing that pleases me and the audience most, I've discovered, is when I am almost ignoring the fact that there's an audience there, when you're consumed by the moment. That's the best I can do for you, better than doing something insincerely to try and please them. Basically, you can just say fuck everybody and do what you want. I mean," he adds hurriedly, "fuck everybody in the nicest possible way."
· Damien Rice's sold-out UK tour begins on October 11 at King Tut's in Glasgow. O is out now on 14th Floor. The single Cannonball is out on October 6.
Related articles
13.09.2002: Live review: Damien Rice, Borderline, London
09.08.2002: CD review: Damien Rice: O
Useful link
Damien Rice official site
onino - July 28 2003Debut album from young singer-songwriter which sold 50,000 copies in his native Ireland after its 2002 release on his own label DRM. Formerly a member of forgotten indie rockers Juniper, Rice sent a demo to composer David Arnold, who loved it so much he agreed to fund the recording of an album. The result has a forlorn, fragile and quietly majestic beauty which has gained immense critical acclaim and drawn comparisons with Ryan Adams, Syd Barrett, Skip Spence and Leonard Cohen.
MTV.com - Damien Rice:BioOne of Damien Rice's strengths is his ability to create that feeling of intimacy in a room full of listeners. He's apt to request that the stage lights be turned down or to borrow a beer mid-song from a fan. His performances are at once serious and informal and unpretentious. They often feel more like intense, musical conversations than concerts. "All the time, I'm looking for the feeling that there's three people in the audience and I'm talking straight to them, as opposed to 'Hello everybody!'" says Damien. "That works fine with certain acts, but what we're doing is so personal." Achieving that intimacy is no small feat. Since well before the U.S. release of his debut solo album, O Rice has been selling-out shows at prestigious venues across the country. The album has already been released to tremendous success in the U.K. At nearly double-platinum status in his native Ireland, Rice has received three nominations in the 2003 Meteor Ireland Music Awards, in addition to winning the Hot Press Readers' Poll for Best Album and entering the top 5 for Best Male Singer, Best Live Act, Best Songwriter and Best Single. Rice himself has a hard time categorizing the music. "I don't know if the songs are intense, and I don't want to know," he says, amiably but firmly. "I don't want to think about it, because then it distracts me from what I'm doing. I never really perform well if I'm thinking 'What's the emotion in this song?' I just leave it be. They are what they are." Born in Dublin, Rice first encountered his muse as a teenager. "I know I always sang. In school I was always in the choir, but I didn't have one of these classic upbringings, like Joni Mitchell records playing all the time and my parents being hippies. My dad plays, so there was always that, but it was never a musical household from the point of view of having loads of records in the house, or music playing all the time. My dad had one Dylan record and I listened to 'Blowing In The Wind' on it. But that was the only song I connected with when I was a kid. I used to spend a lot of time outdoors. I had a dog and I used to fish a lot. Down by the river and taking the dog for a walk-I used to spend tons of time like that on my own. The time the music came into my life was when my elder sister had a boyfriend who played guitar. Then girls came into my life, and fishing kinda stopped. I picked up the guitar at that time, and once I had something to play while I was singing, it just never stopped. I used to find a lot of peace just writing something and playing it over and over to myself in my room. I was always getting into trouble for not doing my homework."
Damien became the lead singer of Juniper, a loud rock five-piece from Celbridge, just south of Dublin. The band signed with PolyGram, and although they delivered just two singles, Juniper played such significant venues as Dublin's Olympia and recorded at studios including Windmill Lane and Abbey Road. Juniper's music wasn't exactly his thing, so he left the band and spent eight months traveling around Europe, eventually returning to Ireland to start gigging in his own right. During Juniper, Rice had been in touch with David Arnold, the producer-arranger-artist well known as John Barry's successor as the James Bond music creator. "When I left the band, he became more interested in what I was doing and wanted to help out. When he heard "The Blower's Daughter," he loved it and said, 'You should definitely make a record of it.'" The song would later become the first single on the Irish version of the album. Arnold offered the use of AIR Studios in London, but in his characteristic single-mindedness, Rice chose to record in his bedroom instead. "When I'd recorded a good load of songs, I went over and spent a week in AIR with him to mix." Damien still didn't feel finished with the album. "David had just spent ten grand on a week in AIR, and I had to turn around at the end and go, 'I don't really like what we've done.'
"He was absolutely cool about it. He said, 'Do what you want to do.' So I went back home and-I think it was another year and a half later-I eventually finished the record and had it mixed myself. We didn't think it was possible to mix the record with the little eight-track I had, but it turned out to be a good little machine." The results are exactly what one hears on O. Rice has some important champions Stateside, too. The word of mouth surrounding O can be attributed, in large part, to KCRW music director Nic Harcourt and his influential show, Morning Becomes Eclectic. Harcourt began playing tracks on-air well before the disc's U.S. release, and several of the album's songs remain in heavy rotation on the program. Now stations nationwide are following suit. Rice is deliberate about his art, and it's increasingly rewarding. Still, he maintains a commitment to spontaneity, improvisation and living in the moment. Each show is different from the last, and he never plays a song the same way twice. "The crowds are coming and that's exciting," he says. "On the other hand, it creates a bigger expectation to deliver something, and a bigger challenge not to think about delivering anything."
MTV.com - October 6 2003LOS ANGELES — Damien Rice got Shorty.
The Irish singer/songwriter won the third annual Shortlist Music Prize on Sunday, stealing the award's new gold statuette, the Shorty, from higher profile nominees like Floetry and Interpol.
Rice, whose passionate performance earlier in the night entranced the sold-out Wiltern Theatre (click for exclusive photos), was so certain someone else would win that he was on his way out of the venue after the five-hour concert when an organizer suggested he stick around.
In his awkward acceptance speech, Rice set the Shorty on the ground and said the night was about celebrating people who are working really hard on music.
"I felt like the record we made was selfish and really just for us," Rice explained, sitting with his band after the event. "It's odd being selected or nominated, but very nice, I guess. The main thing for me that I want to continue is to forget about everybody else and make the next record that we're making just for ourselves again, because there's something about being in a space where you're not thinking of other people. You're just in a moment creating music and emotion and in a space with people you feel comfortable with. And that for me is the essence of what it is that we've done and what it is we do."
The Shortlist Music Prize — which carries with it a $5,000 check and went to N.E.R.D. last year (see "N.E.R.D. Win Shortlist Prize") — is modeled after the U.K.'s prestigious Mercury Music Prize, except the judges are fellow musicians and artists rather than simply journalists.
This year's panel included the Neptunes, Chris Martin, Flea, Erykah Badu, Perry Farrell, Dave Matthews, Josh Homme, Mos Def, the Chemical Brothers, Tori Amos, Tom Waits and directors Cameron Crowe and Spike Jonze, all of whom voted by absentee ballot at Sunday's Listmaker dinner, where the winner was chosen. Past Shortlist supporters Beck, the Roots' Ahmir
"?uestlove" Thompson, Macy Gray and Dan "the Automator" Nakamura, along with newcomer Musiq, attended the dinner.
Since the Shortlist Prize is designed for emerging artists, any album that has sold more than 500,000 copies is ineligible when the long list is compiled in the summer. The original list, which consists of about 100 albums, is narrowed down to 10, the coveted Shortlist. Before the award was presented, eight of the 10 acts on the Shortlist performed. Sigur Ros, who won the inaugural Shortlist Prize, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were nominated but could not perform because of other commitments.
In his five-song set, Rice played four songs from his winning O before closing with the B-side "Woman Like a Man." The single "Volcano," which showcased Vyvienne Long's cello chops, was a standout, but the crowd favorite was certainly "Cold Water." Before the song, Rice explained it was about breaking off an imaginary relationship, but the laughs ended as soon as Lisa Hannigan's satin voice began. The mood changed again when Rice took over, exploding in a rage that was both frightening and inspiring.
The Streets opened the show with British rapper Mike Skinner rhyming over DJ tracks in between sipping on a bottle of champagne. The perpetual partier seemed a bit out of place in the early time slot, but the crowd danced along. Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, looked a little uncomfortable as well, her issue being the size of the theater. The club veteran made things more comfortable, however, when she meandered out into the crowd as she sang old soul standards.
Bright Eyes were the first full band to take the stage, destroying the barebones vibe with a loud, sometimes chaotic blend of 13 performers, including two drummers. Even with all that going on, singer Conor Oberst managed to keep all attention on his distinct croon. Before ending with a show-stealing "Let's Not Sh-- Ourselves," Oberst went on a rant about playing in a Clear Channel-owned venue, something the band tries to avoid. "I'd like to draw a line in the sand and say you're either with us or against us," he said. His fans answered by screaming every word to the song. One even crashed the staged and bowed on his knees until security removed him.
The Black Keys' show looked smaller, which just guitarist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney onstage, but the sound was just as huge, blending elements of traditional blues with Jimi Hendrix-style guitar rock. Chestnutt followed with a spirited set of rock and soul, featuring "The Seed" and other tracks from his Headphone Masterpiece. Floetry's show was equally soulful, but with a hip-hop flavor similar to the Fugees.
Interpol closed the show with six songs from the band's acclaimed debut, including favorites "NYC," "PDA" and "Obstacle 1." The Joy Division-inspired tunes had fans dancing, but after nearly five hours of music, some showed a look that seemed to say, "Just announce the damn winner already."
"I don't think you can call it the Shortlist anymore, 'cause we've all been here for four f---ing hours now," Macy Gray joked at one point.
A more condensed version of the evening, including interviews and a sneak peak into the Listmaker dinner, will air October 25 on MTV2.
—Corey Moss
Foul-mouthed folk troubadour Damien Rice may think the music industry is a load of shite, but it's not stopped him from releasing the heartbreak album of the year. But then you'd expect little less from a man who dumped his appointed record label Polygram to grow vegetables in Tuscany.
Read all about the man in full in this week's NME, issue October 4. In the meantime, you can watch Damien Rice weave his magic as he plays a selection of live tracks.
Irish singer/songwriter Damien Rice can be operatic or folky without straining his talents or abusing either genre. His sensual, sumptuous and yet utterly unsentimental ballads on O (* * *) recall the plaintive charm of David Gray and the passion of Ryan Adams.
DAMIEN
RICE
O
(Vector)
US release date: 10 June 2003
UK release date: 22 July 2002 O was released some time ago overseas, to no small amount of critical and public acclaim. Nearly a year later, it finally makes its way to American shores -- and it's well worth the wait, for within the singer/songwriter mold, Damien Rice shows significant talent. The comparisons to Jeff Buckley are readily available and somewhat fitting, but it's immediately unsatisfying to pigeonhole his style in any way. Rice possesses an operatic sensibility that often exceeds even Buckley's famed sense of dramatics, using his voice as a surprisingly expressive and dramatic instrument; in fact, his entire style, from his sense of arrangements to his use of background vocals, screams "Drama!"
Don't let that scare you away, though. The irony of Rice's approach is that he rarely overwhelms you. Surprisingly, much of O threatens to slip by on a casual listen. On a purely surface level, his sound seems to be all about his voice, which often reaches a fragile, breathy register, as if his body is so exhausted with emotion that the lyrics must leak out. If it were just him and an acoustic guitar, though, O would be a shadow of itself (despite the almost rabid word of mouth that surrounds his live shows). His use of strings (especially Vyvienne Long's mournful cello parts) and female vocal accompaniment elevate O beyond the simple singer/songwriter template.
O kicks off with little fanfare; "Delicate" lives up to its name by starting off as a simple strum n' sing arrangement with a nice acoustic guitar coda to close things out. It's with "Volcano" that things start to take off; strings cut in immediately, with Lisa Hannigan providing nice harmony vocals. She then sings the second stanza by herself, giving the song some real smolder.
Hannigan is obviously Rice's secret weapon -- for all of his considerable talent, Hannigan's presence really fleshes his ideas out. She rarely, if ever sings simple background vocals, instead offering countermelodies or completely different points of view. In "The Blower's Daughter", Rice laments a romantic's apology: "Can't take my eyes off of you". Simple enough, but the song really gains depth when Hannigan responds in almost ghostly fashion, "Did I say that I want you to?" She starts off "Cold Water" as if she'll sing it alone, until Rice comes in about 2/3 of the way through to take the song in a wildly different direction. Perhaps Hannigan's finest moment, though, comes at the very end, as a secret track. She sings the melody to "Silent Night", but the words are along the lines of "Silent night / Moonlit night / Nothing's changed nothing is right / I should be stronger than weeping alone / You should be weaker than sending me home / I can't stop you fighting to sleep / Sleep in Heavenly peace". As an album closer, it's absolutely heartbreaking.
With praise for Hannigan's contributions duly heaped, attention has to swing back around to Rice. Throughout O, he somehow manages the task of sounding alternately lo-fi (in his stripped-down vocals and acoustic melodies) and sophisticated (in the sterling, almost vintage string arrangements). Time after time, the strings build and build, sometimes soaring off into the ether, other times making way for a solitary bass line or acoustic rhythm. Rice's embellishments range from the subtle (the almost imperceptible sound of children laughing and playing in the U.S. version's extra cut, "Older Chests") to the integral (his use of clinking glass as percussion on "Cheers Darlin'") to the full-blown (the truly operatic buildup in Inuit that marks "Eskimo"). After Hannigan's delicate intro to "Cold Water", Rice turns the song into a completely different beast, building up to a crescendo of distorted levels and a furious acoustic break that would do Jimmy Page proud.
In short, Rice isn't afraid to follow his muse, regardless of whether she inspires him to create artsy cacophonies or gentle lullabies. Sometimes, it gets the better of him (despite the fact that O methodically builds up to "Eskimo"'s ultra-dramatic crescendo, it still feels a little cheesy), but there's no way you can penalize him for the effort. With O, Rice has brought something new to the singer/songwriter genre: an accomplished sense of dramatics that keeps his music from ever becoming earthbound.
Andrew Gilstrap, 2 July 2003
"Irish troubadour Damien Rice doesn't so much reinvent the folk genre on this lush, impossibly mature debut album as push its boundaries in several compelling musical directions at once--all the more remarkable considering the album was largely self-produced and home-recorded. His songs revolve around familiar, bittersweet concerns of life, love and their attendant frustrations, but delivered with conspiratorial intimacy on melodic wings that (like on the graceful "Cannonball") Rice seems almost embarrassed to share. If there's anything like a template here, it's "The Blower's Daughter," the song that first attracted the interest/stewardship of film composer David Arnold (whose guest production provides "Amie" with expansive cinematic elegance) and became a massive Irish hit. His plaintive vocal, embroidered by the mournful solo cello of Vyvienne Long, is suddenly brightened by an instrumental flourish and Lisa Hannigan's vocals--before just as quickly wafting on the breeze. With touches that range from "Day in the Life"-styled string collages to the dizzy, exhilarating neo-operatic excesses of the 16-minute "Eskimo," Rice's musical palate here is as adventurous as his songs are grounded in emotional intimacy." --Jerry McCulley Album Description
Damien Rice's intriguing brand of stylishly, un-styled dirty folk music has made him one of the standout artists of 2003. O was first released in Ireland, where it quickly broke the top ten, and achieved triple-platinum status.
"Ostensibly from the singer-songwriter school, Damien Rice, who hails from Ireland, exhibits few of that genre's confessional impulses and none of its folky earnestness. His acoustic guitar deploys an arsenal of lush, dramatic effects, and his voice and lyrics draw inspiration from such self-concealing obsessives as Thom Yorke, Elliott Smith and -- a now-ubiquitous influence -- Jeff Buckley. On O, his debut album, Rice elongates his delicate melodies nearly to the breaking point, an effect that mirrors the desperate search for love and meaning in songs such as "Volcano." Lisa Hannigan's breathy vocals and Vyvienne Long's sonorous cello often shadow Rice as he sings, like remembered or imagined counterparts in an unending internal conversation. Does this album's title suggest a perfect circle, an orgasm or just the void that haunts even the deepest relationships? All that and more in songs that, for all their quietness, leave a dark, lasting impression." 3/5
"Irish singer/songwriter Damien Rice spent his childhood fishing and daydreaming in the countryside of Celbridge, County Kildare. Painting and writing songs inspired him as a young man, motivating Rice to put a band together. The heavy, indie-rock sounds of Juniper were signed to Polygram in 1997 and "The World Is Dead" and "Weathermen" did moderately well on Irish radio. When it came time to recording a full-length album, contractual rules from the label prevented Juniper from doing so, so Rice split. He headed for the hills of Tuscany in 1999 and lived his life as a wanderer around Europe. Rice returned to Dublin within a year to focus on music once again, scrounging up enough money to record a demo. Rice sent it to producer/film composer David Arnold (Bjork, Nina Persson, Paul Oakenfold), and lucky for him, Arnold loved it. Arnold set Rice up in his very own mobile studio to make a record. His first single, "The Blower's Daughter', was an instant top 20 hit when it appeared in fall 2001. Shared gigs with McAlmont & Butler and folkie Kathryn Williams followed in summer 2002 when Rice released O in the UK." MacKenzie Wilson
Damien Rice
O
[Vector; 2003]
Rating: 5.4 The endurance of the bare-boned singer/songwriter archetype is befuddling, considering that in 2003, the genre seems almost terminally idle. But sweet-faced, shaggy-haired poet-players have always seeped up an inordinate amount of hyperbolic, next-big-thing gushing from critics and fans; it's usually the kind of unchecked flattery that stems from recognizing what massive balls it takes to be unabashedly earnest, accepting that it's actually kinda brave to indulge the precious sentimentality that goes hand-in-hand with maudlin emoting.
Come the fuck on. This shit doesn't earn anyone a free pass. It's still possible to-- without repressing romanticism entirely-- take your broken heart and make its artistic likeness more interesting and dynamic than the overwrought, acoustic sap perpetuated every day in coffeehouses and Hallmark stores across America. Because on its own, even a really convincing Sincere Face is never enough to make anyone's gut flip.
Yes, the soft, tortured acoustic ballad is a valid and occasionally transcendental form of creative expression (see Dylan, Buckley, Nick Drake et. al.) but over the last fifty years, it's also become mind-numbingly formulaic. Irish troubadour Damien Rice's steadfast refusal to revise and redeploy means that his ten-track debut, for all its quiet confessions, is ultimately far more stagnant and sonically predictable than anybody wants to admit: O's musical path is so painfully well-tread that the record seems at times almost self-mocking, and Rice himself singer/songwrites like he's playing that shit on TV. Bravely calling on all renowned acoustic slingers from Joan Baez to Elliott Smith, Rice synthesizes the defining characteristics of folk-rock's quirky forefathers without coughing up a single noteworthy contribution of his own-- not only is Rice failing to augment the contemporary folk-rock paradigm, he's just doing an awkward imitation.
The big, inescapable problem with O is that, aside from being derivative, Rice's songwriting is also unbearably repetitive-- he stubbornly relies upon time-tested singer/songwriter formulas (quiet acoustic strumming and sober, wavering vocals), and repeats them almost exactly the same way, every time. Even his noble attempts at creating distinction, including an expectedly swelling string section whose rises and falls are, yes, cartoonishly familiar, seem knee-jerk and contrived. The whisper/scream trick, the dim acoustic intro, the painfully restrained percussion, the lilting chorus-- a hidden, a cappella version of "Silent Night"? Really?
And yet Rice makes it difficult to pull the bullshit card, because O is so unrelentingly affable. It's thoughtfully rendered, and if only superficially, all the proper parts are in place. His breathy vocals-- curiously pitched and slightly broguish-- are compelling, and when mixed with the airy coos of the impeccable Lisa Hannigan, these songs can surpass their mundane, by-the-book casings, at least momentarily; likewise, Rice is a capable guitar player, although his Dave Matthews-via-David Gray pluck-and-strum can be awfully exhausting. Still, irksome familiarity will always eclipse niceness, and this record's got no surprises.
Single "Volcano" is O's highlight. A rich, meandering cello line slides in between jerky acoustic strums, light drums and curt cymbal tapping pushing up against Rice's sufficiently vague lyrics ("What I am to you/ Is not real/ What I am to you/ Is not what you mean to me"). There's a spectral creepiness implied in the uncomfortable sparseness of the track, which sorta falls apart in the crooned bridge, but comes back in the haunting, many-tracked vocal breakdown with Hannigan, and its sinister suggestion is welcome-- when "The Blower's Daughter" interrupts, with its dramatic "I can't take my eyes off of you!" hollers, the memory of "Volcano"'s baleful, Nastasia-y threat becomes infinitely more appealing. Things get worse: even the leather bound adult-alternative handbook advises against publicly airing sentiments like "Cannonball"'s "Love/ Taught me to cry."
O has a thick canvas cover and impressive art-book packaging; its liner notes are crammed with drawings, paintings, and curiously superimposed poems. It seems instantly unfair that the record housed inside doesn't get the same kind of boundary-breaking treatment, but relies instead on all the whiny, sad-eyed clichés of a genre in desperate need of a fresh approach.
Amanda Petrusich
Musicians from all parts of the globe join forces in Philly Breathtaking, though, was Irish singer Damien Rice who, despite breaking strings on his guitar, gave an awesome performance. More incredible than Rice was his singing partner Lisa Hannigan, part of his group, who gave a rendition of Janis Joplin's song "Mercedes Benz."
Hannigan rescued Rice without losing a beat with her songbird's voice as he stopped to put a new string on his guitar. Haunting was their duet performance of "Volcano" from the album "O," his debut album, which is double platinum in Ireland. At the festival, Damien Rice was presented with the first WXPN Award for an emerging artist. Program Director Bruce Warren, Michaela Majoun, David Dye and other on-air hosts from the radio station presented the plaque on stage to the humble Rice. The award recognizes up-and-coming artists who have produced an album or work that demonstrates outstanding vision, creativity and songwriting ability. The award presentation marks the tenth anniversary of the Singer Songwriter Weekend.
Other acts included English guitarist Richard Thompson, Canadian Kathleen Edwards, Texan Rhett Miller, New York's They Might be Giants, Scotland's Alexi Murdoch and Philadelphia's own Grey Eye Glances.
Damien Rice Sings for LoversIrish singer-songwriter shoots for the heart On a January evening in Los Angeles, Britney Spears and actor Colin Farrell made tabloid headlines by making out vigorously in the VIP room of the Troubadour club. What compelled them to get so affectionate so suddenly? Quite possibly the music of Damien Rice. After all, the rakish twenty-nine-year-old Irish folk sensation, whom they came to see perform, crafts songs that attack the heart strings like an angry bee.
Rice's debut album, O, brims with swelling string sections and unrequited longing. Self-released and self-recorded, the album has garnered glowing reviews from the U.K. press for its absorbing melodies and emotional wallop. Comparisons to David Gray and Jeff Buckley have been made, and there is a passing resemblance to Sixties folk singer Donovan. But Rice, who has lined up two U.S. appearances for July before mounting a full seventeen-date tour starting in September, is nothing if not determined to be his own man. Growing up outside of Dublin in the town of Celbridge, Rice discovered at thirteen that songwriting felt as good as any other boyhood pursuit.
"It was literally like discovering masturbation," he jokes. "I'd just play for hours and a song would pop out. In high school Rice and his friends formed a band called Juniper, in which he played guitar and shared the singing. In their eight years together, Juniper managed to score a record deal and a loyal following, but Rice felt constrained by the band's more straight-ahead rock sound.
"There's a place in Dublin called the Olympia," he says. "It holds 15,000 people. Everybody's played there: Radiohead, Neil Young, Bjork. It was my dream to play there -- it's like a watermark. I was standing backstage, with my manager with his arm around my shoulder, and there was all this hype. I had gone onstage like a performing monkey, doing what all these people had paid to see me do, but missing the actual experience."
Commercial expectations compounded the problem. "I got into a big fight with the record company over the direction of the music," Rice says. "They'd promised me freedom on the second single, but I was brought into the office and told, 'This is what you're doing.'"
When creative differences within the band emerged, Rice figured it was time to split. "The lads didn't really like the acoustic songs I wrote," he says. "They wanted to go in more of the Radiohead direction. I'd had the taste of being signed, getting to record in the top studios that U2 had been in, getting to play the gigs . . . but underneath it all, I was genuinely unhappy," he recalls. "So I decided to run away to Tuscany [Italy]. I had this dream of living in the hills and thought, 'Jesus, it's not that far away.'"
But a funny thing happened in those hills. "I'd kind of given up on music," he says. "I figured I was just gonna be a farmer or something." Rice recalls having an epiphany while surveying the rows upon rows of perfectly manicured vineyards and olive groves. "I like being scattered and random, and I'd left because the record company was trying to box me in and make everything orderly and functional. I suddenly realized that I'd come to a place that was very similar to the state of mind I'd complained about being in before. I was just bringing my stuff with me and not escaping anything."
Rice returned to Ireland a new man, recommitted to music but determined to listen to his own muse. In order to avoid compromising his vision, the formerly scattered singer decided he'd have to put his hands in everything. Rice set up his own label "just a part of my room with a computer and a fax and phone." He also borrowed enough money to buy portable home studio equipment and make his dream album.
Rice threw whatever pleased his ear into O, including opera singers, Gregorian chants, and secret weapon, Lisa Hannigan, who shares vocal duties on the album and performs with him on tour. Possessing a honeyed voice that falls midway between Bjork and Cat Power, Hannigan has earned her share of admirers among Rice's fans. "You definitely get that," he says, laughing. "Especially on the message board. You get a thread that starts 'The Lovely Lisa Hannigan,' and all these people going, 'I love her.' 'Oh, I love her too.' 'Well I'm going to marry her.' 'No I am.'"
A year after its release O remains on the Irish charts, and was recently put out in the States on Vector Records. But, in the wake of his success, Rice is still careful to listen to his muse. "I never want to be so busy that my job becomes 'someone who promotes his music.'" EVAN SCHLANSKY, July 3 2003
Inquirer Popular Music Critic - Sounding Out
A fancy package for an extraordinary debut
By Tom Moon
When it was released in Ireland and England last summer, Damien Rice's extraordinary debut, O, had a clothbound cover, like a book, and page after page of beautiful artwork that led to the CD tucked elegantly in back.
"It came out of one of those nights where you just sit and ask yourself everything," Rice recalled of the attention-getting package. The scruffy Irish singer-songwriter was seated in a Philadelphia diner the morning after his Tin Angel debut, an event that - given how quickly Rice is rising - 600 people will one day claim to have attended.
"Sometimes important things come out of those 'What are you doing with your life?' conversations," said Rice, 28, recipient of the inaugural XPN Emerging Artist Award. "For me, the question was more 'What do you bring to this world?'
"To that I had to answer, 'I manufacture plastic, and I'm hoping to manufacture loads of it.' Which got me thinking about how deadly that is. And I started thinking how writers, they can say, 'I make books.' Somehow that feels cleaner, like a more beautiful thing to do."
So Rice - who will perform July 20 at the WXPN-FM (88.5) Singer-Songwriter Weekend on Penn's Landing - fashioned his "book," painting some of the artwork himself and soliciting contributions from friends.
After a slow start, audiences at the open-mike nights Rice frequented began to seek out the indie-label CD. And news spread about the tunesmith who had recorded most of his record in living rooms using low-budget gear.
Record labels in the States became interested, and eventually engaged in a bidding war. But when it came time to manufacture the thing, Rice's U.S. label - the newly formed Vector Recordings - blanched at the cost of the nontraditional packaging and argued for a more modest approach. And Rice, being an artist, refused to back down.
"Not to go all tree-hugging about it, but what we put out is what we get back. To me, it's more important that people encounter this thing I think is just beautiful than it is for us to all make 25 percent extra profit... . To me, the issue is about how people will first encounter what I'm doing. I had to say, 'This is its own thing. It goes together, don't try to change it.' "
After weeks of back and forth, Rice and Vector compromised: The first 30,000 copies of O, which was released Tuesday, will be clothbound, and subsequent pressings will be the traditional cardboard "eco-pak." Later, a deluxe cloth "limited-edition" collector's item, bundled with a live DVD, will also be sold for a few dollars extra.
From his early days in several successful Irish rock bands, most famously Juniper, Rice has fought for what he believes.
"The test these days is, can you do anything on your own terms as a recording artist? I think you can, if you're willing to go down.
"You learn pretty quickly that the people at the labels crave more security in life, and so they don't make artistic decisions well. I'm not afraid of failing, in industry terms, because I've already been right at the bottom and I have to say I loved it. To me, being successful is doing it on your own terms."
That iconoclastic spirit rattles through O, which incorporates bits of '60s folk narrative (the image-rich yarn "The Blower's Daughter"), as well as sprawling attempts at art-rock ("Eskimo," a meditation on writer's block), rash love odes, and rambling confessionals ("Volcano").
Like David Gray and others, Rice sometimes lets his thoughts rush out in a torrent of conflicting images, but is equally capable of a blunt summation that leaves no room for doubt. One of the best illustrations of Rice's gift comes on the bitter "Cheers Darling," a song Rice wrote at 3 a.m., after an argument with an unfaithful lover. At the Tin Angel, he performed it as a theatrical piece, stopping between toasts to provide details on the relationship.
"That really did come about at 3 a.m.," Rice says. "I put down this loop of rhythm I made out of clinking glasses and percussion noises. Then after I listened back, I just recorded whatever words fell out of my mouth. That showed me how interesting stuff comes from not thinking, not trying to be clever. Really, not trying at all."
It's a lesson he's learned several times in the last few years when he tried to force himself to write, when he went to the most plush studio in Dublin to record only to discover that the "too polished" tracks had none of the soul of his homemade demos.
"If I'm not bursting with whatever, there's no point trying... . I write because I have to do it, and when it's happening it's like a meditative state. It's all about letting out what's gone in," Rice says. "It's like vomiting, in a sense... . You always feel better afterward."
Damien Rice
artist website : damienrice.com
Born in Dublin, Damien Rice grew up by the River Liffey. He spent much of his childhood by the river, fishing. Hours of catching little left plenty of time for thinking.
In 1999 Damien moved to Tuscany, and then busked around Europe. He returned home later that year and recorded a demo with borrowed money, which he sent to contemporary composer/arranger David Arnold. David, who subsequently worked on the record, bought Damien a mobile recording studio and in March 2000 Damien began recording his debut album. The mobile recording studio allowed Damien to create an album in a non-traditional, spontaneous fashion, in his bedroom, his kitchen, wherever and whenever it felt right.
The result is O: ten unique songs that display a tremendous breadth of scope and musical ambition, married to lyrics of breathtaking depth. Damien released the album through his own label in Ireland, where it established itself in the top ten, gained double platinum status, and received numerous critical and popular awards. 14th Floor Records released Rice's O in the UK on March 24th 2003. Can a U.S. record deal be far behind?
MSNBC Newsweek - June 2003"Songs In The Key Of Rice"Heard anything positively great lately? Actually, yes
June 23 issue — In the mid-’90s, in Dublin, Damien Rice’s band Juniper released a hit single, causing the record company to demand another hit single, causing Damien Rice to bristle, quit the band, leave the country and travel around Europe playing guitar for coins on the street. “I’m a total pain in the a— when somebody (a) wants to change me or (b) doesn’t get what it is I do,” he says. “I’m a moody f—ker.” Interview by Jeff Giles, NEWSWEEK
allrightnow - Atlanta, May 15 2003Tonight I went to see Damien Rice appear at the Cotton Club here in Atlanta. I had added some video footage of this singer/songwriter from Ireland some weeks ago. His voice and style appealed to me at once, but I had not heard any of his CDs. After seeing the video footage I bought my tickets to see him.
At first I was sad to learn only he was on and not him and his band, but after the very first song I didn't care about the band not being there, and in fact it showed how talented this guy is without any other musicians.
I have totally fallen in love with this guy's voice and performance. I had never seen an act like it. And I have been around a loooooooooong time.
He sang so many songs, lasting more than 90 minutes ... The audience were just in a trance like I was right through the show. He plays guitar with such perfection and creates sounds with these hi-tech pedals and you are just amazed the sound he makes. His songs were funny, sad, sexy and everything else. He is such a small guy, but has a huge huge talent.
He will be playing quite a few more shows before he returns to Ireland. Then he returns for a full tour with his band in Sept. I have NO doubt in my mind these shows will be very successful. Catch him while the crowds are small because soon everyone will know of Damien.
U.S. RELEASE OF DAMIEN RICE’S O IS SLATED FOR JUNE 3 ON VECTOR RECORDINGS
U.S. TOUR BEGINS APRIL 27 IN BOSTON
-London’s Sunday Times on O
Already a tremendous critical success in the U.K., Damiens Rice's debut O will be released stateside June 3 on Vector Recordings. He sets out on an extensive U.S. tour April 27.
Critics are virtually unanimous in proclaiming O a refreshing, singular album. In a 4-star review, Q Magazine calls it "mesmerizing" and says that "like a more edgy David Gray or a baggage-free Elliott Smith, Rice’s songs are songwriterly, widescreen tunes of sour love and near-death, but with a musical twist of strings, occasional shouting and chanting." The Guardian corroborates saying "O is gorgeous and understated, never too introverted to include a lovely melody."
O opens with Rice slowly strumming the hammer-on chords of "Delicate" and builds to a lush, operatic climax in the epic final track, "Eskimo." In between, Rice traverses a broad spectrum of emotions, telling poignant stories of love and loss and triumph and beauty. The sound is enriched by the ethereal vocals of Lisa Hannigan and cello by Vyvienne Long. Rice is equally beloved for his live performance, which Steve Hochman of the Los Angeles Times calls "stunning" and Neil McCormick of The Daily Telegraph (UK) calls "one of the most extraordinary concerts I have ever seen." The shows reveal the wide range of Rice’s repertoire—angry flights of rock guitar as well as Rice’s mellower acoustic tunes—complemented by animated tales about the characters and experiences that inspire the songs.
Damien Rice is the first artist signed to Vector Recordings, a new, nationally distributed label formed by Ken Levitan and former RCA president Jack Rovner.
DAMIEN RICE
O (DRM)
The shortest of these songs is 4:36. The closing track, ‘Eskimo’, trails a fair bit longer, involving a mini opera and millions of string players, all sawing away with gusto. Welcome, listeners, to the full and vastly ambitious world of Irish auteur, Damien Rice.
Good job he’s a bit talented, or this record would be an awful chore. Most of the time, the former member of Juniper justifies the boldness and the artistic indulgence. His songs are mostly sprung with drama or suspense. On ‘The Blower’s Daughter’, the love is compelling, a bit scarey. We hear the drunken guy on ‘Cheers Darlin’’, staggering home after an unsuccessful night on the pull, and we sympathise with his ache. ‘I Remember’ start’s with Lisa Hannigan’s version of the affair, before Damien steams in with a passionate revision.
At times he resembles his mate Glen Hansard from The Frames. Maybe it’s the acoustic guitar and the ferocity of it all. Maybe there’s a common link back to early Van Morrison and that reeling transcendence. Having said that, some of Damien’s art is closer to Leonard Cohen, with bits of Belgian word-spinner Jacques Brel, or maybe even some gleefully strange Berlin cabaret act.
Sometimes the going is too self-conscious; too much intellect at the expense of great tunes and songwriting texture. Song of the tracks could lose a few minutes and sound better for it. Alternately, a song like ‘Amie’ really benefits from the slow build, a regular love song that veers into an epic dimension.
No ordinary record, then. Give thanks.
Stuart Bailie |
