March 8, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Question of the day
I am listening to Damien Rice's O in preparation for retrieving his new album from my friend's truck, where it has been languishing unlistened to for weeks. It's still really good. But I kind of feel like it's not quite as great as it was when I was going through an impressively gnarly breakup. Listening to it, it occurs to me that Damien Rice may be the single greatest portrayer of agony in the entire history of the music world--which is why his music's on, like, every Dawson's Creek ripoff on television. I mean, the raw tremor vibrates with such intensity that I find myself wishing that I could head over to his house with a syringe full of prozac . . . or at the very least, find some appropriately bleak and grimy street to walk down with my hands thrust deep into my pockets and not a friend in the world, just so that he wouldn't be so alone with it all.
Has anyone else had this experience? Is "O" better titled "Soundtrack for an astoundingly awful love life?"
Posted by Jane Galt at March 8, 2007 10:50 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound linksHey Meghan,
Yes, you are totally correct. My girlfriend and I saw him play at the Beacon on the Upper West Side in December and while the show was amazing, one left feeling like they had just witnessed a suicide or something. The man has a panache to turn a wonderful day that I might be having into a depressive, broody time. That's why I love his music. Whenever I think that the world is a wonderful place, I get a dose of reality from him.
It also happens to remind me of my favorite line from the movie Seven. It's the last line of the film when Morgan Freeman's character says: "Earnest Hemingway once wrote: 'The world is a wonderful place and worth fighting for'. I agree with the last part."
I first listened to him after a break-up, and I haven't felt much desire to listen to him since. When you're not feeling self-pity (which I certainly don't need a break-up in order to feel), I think the kind of pure emoting that Rice specializes in, the kind without much substance behind it, grows cloying. What saves him, in my opinion, is Lisa Hannigan. Her voice is equally gorgeous, but not as...Dawson's Creek-y. It's more haunting than self-conscious. Rice was sometimes compared to David Gray when "O" was released, but I return to Gray's early work from time to time with no decline in my appreciation for it -- "Gathering Dust" is as good a place to start as any.
rice sounds better than he is (as silly as that may seem to say about music). that is, he's got great atomosphere and vibe, but many of the songs don't really hold up.
Also, you might want to listen to Swell Season (Glenn Hansard from The Frames, Marketa Irglova, and some other people). They opened for Rice at that concert I went to on the UWS. What a miserable set of music. They might have Rice topped for misery, self-pity, and overall disgust with one's lot. All uplifting stuff, really.
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