Damien Rice O
Released: June 10, 2003 Origination Year: 2003 Time: 62:35 Tracks: 10 Produced by: David Arnold Style: Studio Format: CD Enhancement: None Website: www.damienrice.com

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Damien Rice... thus far the single most important new singer/songwriter of the 21st Century. Talent like this comes along only once in a very great while. We're talking a league of such extraordinary gentlemen(women) as Townes Van Zandt, Gene Clark, Gram Parsons, and the inestimable talents of Van Morrison, Leonard Cohen, and Bob Dylan. The only recent troubadors who might be somewhat comparable are the late Jeff Buckley, the violin-wielding Lisa Germano, and Canada's Jane Siberry (who's "Calling All Angels" is, already, a timeless classic - and is not the same song that Train now has out under the same title). The John Mayers and Josh Rouses and Pete Yorns of the world need not apply. This is talent far beyond that of mere artists with the meager "label" of singer/songwriter. Damien Rice's CD "O" was released in 2003, and was my pick for Album of the Year. "O" has now gone platinum in worldwide sales...and it's time you learned about his astounding talent (and, believe you me, I am not easily impressed!).

An Irish lad born in the 70s, Rice recorded this disc in various "houses and homes" (as he puts it in the liner notes) around the UK and in Paris. While bass, piano, percussion and strings intermittently pop up in the mix, it is the acoustic core of Rice on guitar and vocals, Vyvienne Long on cello, and Lisa Hannigan on vocals (backing and some lead) that make up Rice's haunting sound on this work. (And does this guy have hooks hidden up his sleeve, pulling them out so effortlessly, it seems, at the drop of a hat...er, hook[?].)

And what a sound it is. The lyrical, vocal, and instrumental combination drip emotion, implying dream-like, ineffable ideas that any 10 "emo-core" bands of today could only wish to even approach. In reality, and metaphysically, on many different planes, these are "little anthems of the heart", and from the soul. While Rice's lyrics are excellent, it is his ability, using his voice and his core accompianists, to evoke memories and feelings that amazes. Feeling lost, love lost, unrequited love, sorrow, rainy-day sadness, a knowing understanding of the pains and questions and follies of life...driving a wet road at dusk, just after a downpour, the last remnants of sundown filtering through the clouds, coloring the puddles on the road before you in eerie, dream-like hues...this is the magic of Damien Rice. The music that, together with the vocals, evokes the feelings and memories of old wounds and hurts reopened, and, (and this is very important) perhaps, life's little victories (as Bob Seger tagged the little daily up-lifting wins that keep us all going). Please don't misunderstand - this is not an album so bleak as to make one consider the "long walk off a short peer", and if it has been painted as black and doom throughout, let me reassure you, there is a knowledge within Damien Rice that shines through, an ethereal over-coming it all, if you will, that is really the saving twist of this masterpiece.

In the lead track "delicate", Rice sings in the chorus: "...why'd ya sing 'hallelujah', if it means nothing to ya/why'd ya sing with me at all?...", and it is mesmerizing! The song evokes Jeff Buckley in voice and Buckley's best known song, "Hallelujah" (a cover of the Leonard Cohen penned classic). Float away with "the blower's daughter", the first single and perhaps best track on the disc: "...and so it is, just like you said it would be...it should be...most of the time/and so it is...no love, no glory...no hero in her sky...", climbing to a crying-out vocal crescendo that betrays Rice's knowledge of that which he writes and sings. "cannonball"s astounding: "...stones taught me to fly/love taught me to lie/...courage teach me to be shy.../life taught me to die/so it's not hard to fall/when you float like a cannon ball...". This is pure genius of the first order, simple yet profound, beautiful yet hard to hear... but you want more, please! By the time the cellos enter on track 5, "older chests", you are hooked. You willfully give in to the world that Damien Rice has created on "O".

So, there you have it. I hope this take has achieved, by putting into words, the feeling and emotion contained in Damien Rice's masterpiece "O", and has inspired at least some of you to give it a try. It is a must-have for the romantics and the poetic souls among us, those who wear their hearts on their sleeve (or would like to) and for anyone who truly appreciates the art of fine music-making. In a perfect world, "O" would be the number one selling album for weeks on end...they simply don't get any better.

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