Reviews
Damien Rice
9
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Add to del.ico.us.Review Date: 2007-01-17
For the release of 9, Damien Rice’s second album which was five years in the making, the artist himself gave no interviews to the media. Instead, the tremendously media-shy Rice opted to let the music speak for itself. But the music doesn’t so much speak as seep into your conscious, like pouring treacle all over your musical horizon so you can no longer remember what the sun looks like. Sure it’s gloomy and can be depressing, but it’s also haunting and beautiful.
A simple piano melody begins the album, before adding in the voice of Lisa Hannigan, and later the singing of Rice himself. And that’s it – not much else is added – it’s not needed. There are no frills here; this is a man who records in his garden shed, after all. No frills is how Rice works, he doesn’t need them. The song ‘9 Crimes’ was chosen as the lead single for the album. It shouldn’t work on radio, has nothing really to it: repetitive lyrics and a strange title that has nothing to do with the song itself; but it does work, and works well. It’s like an aural Waiting for Godot – nothing happens, but it’s still magnificent.
The sparseness of the album is probably what stands out the most: here and there strings and guitar are added, but the listener is never hurled violently from their seat. Thus all the beautiful parts are even more heightened: like the string instrumental in ‘Animals Were Gone’ or the brilliant crescendo at the end of ‘Elephant’.
Like many of the songs here, ‘Elephant’ is not a new song. It was previously known as ‘The Blower’s Daughter, Part II’ and was a regular part of Rice’s live performances. As was ‘Rootless Tree’, whose “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, and all we’ve been through” chorus has garnered the album a Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics label. The song itself is the most upbeat on the album, but the aggressive chorus really hinders its chance of being released as a single.
The two subsequent songs are definite contenders for single status. ‘Dogs’ appeared on my Year End Mixtape, even with its bizarre opening line “she lives with an orange tree”. It’s not the most musically astonishing or technically difficult song, but then again, none of Rice’s are. It’s just that there aren’t many duos in the music world today that can pull off the sheer emotion of Rice and Hannigan. ‘Coconut Skins’ is the kind of song you could hear in any pub in Ireland with twenty or so drunk guys singing along. This is the sort of stuff Rice was probably raised on – remember, he doesn’t do interviews, so I can’t ask him to clarify this – and why shouldn’t he write a jaunting sing-along, complete with “la la la”s?
But after this, in the final third of the album, Rice runs out of steam. Live staple ‘Me, My Yoke, and I’ which is as old now as his first album, is a terrible song – both live and here in studio. It’s grating, frustrating, and about as irritating as getting a papercut between your toes. ‘Grey Room’ isn’t so bad, but it’s not as good as any of the first six songs.
‘Accidental Babies’ goes on far too long to be effective, and loses interest about half-way in. ‘Sleep, Don’t Weep’ is a poor man’s ‘Cold Water’: it’s decent enough, but there’s an instrumental catastrophe after it which only has to be heard to be believed. It’s amazing how any record company would let such trite appear on any album.
Tracks to Download: The first six
Score: 7.2
This album doesn’t deserve a lower rating, because the first six songs are so good. But three of the last four aren’t even worth listening to. It seems like Rice ran out of ideas – even though he did have five years to come up with some – it’s no wonder he doesn’t do any interviews, the lazy….
- Ronan Hunt-Murphy