Albums by this artist

9 (2006)

Damien Rice

9

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» MARK T.R. DONOHUE | STAFF WRITER

Damien Rice 9 Warner Bros, 2006 RiYL: Nick Drake, Radiohead, The Frames

O, Damien Rice's 2003 debut, was one of those albums that came right out of left field and knocked me over like a bowling pin. I bought it on the strength of the video for "Volcano" and was immediately taken with the record's near-impossibly beautiful first half, which featured the single (in an even better full-band version) plus "Delicate," "The Blower's Daughter," and the heavenly "Cannonball." In time I grew to appreciate the subtler pleasures of O's old world-influenced second half and for good measure developed a searing crush on Rice's startlingly gorgeous backup vocalist, the ephemerally Black Irish Lisa Hannigan. It was all but inevitable that I named O as my album of the year and wrote an embarrassingly fawning piece about it for Measure.

Despite some high-profile product placements (like songs in the film Closer and the first season of the television series "Lost") Rice has been eerily quiet since O bowed, save a half-baked B-sides mini-LP. Compounded with the disappointment of going to see Rice in concert and finding him to be a rather indifferent live performer, my expectations for 9 couldn't have been much lower.

What a pleasant surprise. 9 gets off to a shaky start by leading off with its three most O-like tracks, but Rice quickly moves past the gentle picking and whispered vocals of "The Animals Were Gone" into a wholly welcome exploration of an entirely different side of his musical personality. 9 is scruffier, angrier, and harder-rocking than its predecessor. "Me, My Yoke & I" and "Rootless Tree" are big, powerful songs that manage to spread out musically without compromising Rice's intimate lyrics and vocal delivery. "Dogs" and "Grey Room" harness folk structures to scampering, hip-hop-inflected drums.

After leading the album off with a featured role on "9 Crimes," Lisa Hannigan is mostly relegated to the background, which is a shame but suits the mood of the album. 9 is a much more masculine record than O, replacing the earlier record's themes of regret and longing with more aggressive shades of anger and bitterness. Even the gentle songs like "Accidental Babies" have a less compromising, more questioning tone. Rice has a rare gift for making lyrics that on paper scan like doggerel sound like major statements when sung. 9 uses that effect in different ways. Rice sells every line, whether he's screaming obscenities on "Rootless Tree" or admiring a too-cool-for-school girlfriend on the playful "Dogs," one of the few optimistic songs on the album.

In a way the more ambitious O, with its choral effects and more dramatic arrangements, seems like the sophomore release while 9 sounds like a debut. Rice doesn't demonstrate as much overall range as he did on his first album, but nor does he much repeat himself (past the rather dreary "Elephant," which was originally titled "The Blower's Daughter II" and doesn't really do enough over six minutes to justify its existence). Taken as a set the two albums serve as an addictive introduction to a rare talent who ought to be settling in for a long and rewarding career.

MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.