Till My Head Falls Off 03.31.04: Feedback Fallout

The other reason that I recommend Sirius is because XM has strong ties to Clear Channel. I’ve been against Clear Channel for a long time now, and, other than the occasional concert ticket, I can now say that I do not in any way support that organization.

Boy forms band with schoolmates, band practices, band gets gigs, band gets talked up by people in the know as the “next big thing”, band get signed to major label, band get ready to record debut album.

Its all fine so far but here is where the wheels start to come off.

Label starts to interfere with creative direction of the band, boy gets pissed off, boy walks out in the middle of recording sessions, boy leaves home country and busks around Europe for a couple of years, boy comes home and decides that music is still what he wants to do in life, boy borrows money to buy a home studio from Bjork producing second cousin.

Boy records album, boy releases album on his own label, album hugely praised, album eventually goes triple platinum in home country, gold in the UK and to sells over 167,000 copies in the US, album win shortlist music prize, boy and his US label decide to re-issue album on the back of this.

I review album while trying to get a gig writing for 411mania.com.

The above is the abridged story of Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice and his debut album O.

It’s very easy to read the above story and think to yourself, “What a prick, he had everything he ever wanted and walked away from it”, but everything about this album screams that its creator is someone that is fiercely independent, cares deeply about everything that he does and wants it to be perfect. Even down to the album’s packaging.

Most albums covers are nothing special, a familiar jewel case that is guaranteed to crack anytime that you handle it with anything besides cashmere oven mitts, occasionally they might be foldout cardboard but that’s it. Only Radiohead have really done anything with the medium of late. O is different. It comes in a linen bound hard backed book that contains handwritten notes and artwork painted by Rice and members of his band. Merely opening the album gives you the impression that you might be dealing with something a little bit different from the norm.

But the presentation would be worthless if it accompanied a disc that sounded awful. As it stands it serves to slightly enhance a remarkable piece of work.

Getting back to my point about the amount of thought that Rice has put into every aspect of the album, although the songs are about different people and relationships; and were written in a different chronological order the album’s track ordering gives the impression that it is all about the one relationship and plots the path of initial infatuation, the actual relationship itself and its painful conclusion and aftermath. Or maybe it’s just a selection of songs that Rice thought sounded nice in that order. Either way, it works.

The album opens with “Delicate”, a song set against a gentle acoustic refrain examining what the prospect of new love can do to a man; capturing the excitement of starting something new whilst still questioning whether or not the protagonist deserves to be with this person.

The next 2 songs, “Volcano” and one of the highlights of the album “The Blowers Daughter” deals with the relationship itself. “Volcano” opens with a cello introduction by Vyvienne Long also contains the first piece of lead vocals from Lisa Hannigan who we’ll get to later. “The Blowers Daughter“ features a chorus which learns a lessen from when Bob Dylan put aside all verse, all poetry; and laid it all on the table by just saying “I want you”. Rice, against a series of soft descending chords, simply tells the object of his desire “I can’t take my eyes off of you”.

3 songs in and the relationship is done, most of what follows is the aftermath and the pain. “Cannonball” and “Older Chests” find Rice missing his love and pleading for time to lick his wounds.

Most of the songs on the album were produced by Rice himself on a portable studio and the album does have a certain homemade feel to it. The next song “Amie” was produced by the aforementioned second cousin David Arnold who is probably best known for his work Bjork’s albums. It certainly has a more polished sound compared to the rest of the album but set against the “I made this” lo-fi vibe of everything else it tends to stick out.

“Cheers Darlin’” finds a drunken Rice bitterly and venomously rebuking the girl because she has moved on and found someone new. Interestingly the actual story behind the song is that Rice tried to char up a girl in a bar, plied her with drink (missing his last bus home in the process) only to have the girl tell him that she had to go because she was late for a meeting with her boyfriend. Rice eventually got home, still drunk and wrote this song, you can hear him fumbling around in the kitchen in the background, knocking off of things.

“Cold Water” borrows very heavily in terms of structure from The Smith’s “I know its over” and John Cale’s piano arrangement for Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” which is probably best known as performed by the late Jeff Buckley who adapted it for guitar. Rice is at this point so lost in his misery that he turns to God for help to guide him out of his pain. The song features backward masked vocals and possibly the first use of Gregorian chanting in a contemporary album. The album up to this point had musically been quite straightforward. The arrangements for the songs mainly consist of Rice singing accompanied by his acoustic guitar, bass, drums, cello and with backing vocals provided by Lisa Hannigan who also occasionally gives voice to the woman in the relationship and the importance of her contribution to the album cannot be overstated. The possessor of a truly beautiful voice, her presence often makes a good song great.

“I remember” starts off with a change of pace. Up till now its mainly been Rice singing about his infatuation, his love, his pain. Here Hannigan, again voicing the woman, over some gentle picked guitar explains what she saw in Rice in the first place. Rice responds angrily, he doesn’t want to listen, he doesn’t want to know. The contrast between the quiet of the female vocals here and the male response is staggering. Imagine how rocking you think you can make the cello and the acoustic guitar sound. Then double it. That’s about half as angry as the music when Rice is singing this song sounds.

The album closes with “Eskimo” and finds a more resigned Rice realising that its over and seeking comfort from his friends. The song features opera singer Doreen Curran singing in Finnish. The album ends with a calm Rice saying that he “looks … [to his] … eskimo friend, when I’m down”.

But wait, there’s a postscript here. The bonus tracks.

“Prague” is about the jealously Rice still feels for his ex and her new man and not being able to deal with it.

The real, last words on the album are left to the woman that has caused Rice such grief, as ever voiced by Lisa Hannigan. On “Silent Night” she sings her own lyrics to the popular Christmas carol and explains that although Rice has constantly berated her and abused her for the pain that she has caused him he gave no thought to the fact that he also caused her tremendous pain and she too has been hurt by the whole situation and that she also deserves some “heavenly peace”.

The 411.::. Rice has often been talked up as “the new David Gray”. I think such comparisons are unfair. Rice is infinitely more talented than Gray is. His songs are both more musically interesting (I will die of shock if I ever hear a David Gray song featured Gregorian chanting) and emotionally deeper than anything Gray could stretch to.

This album is probably my second favourite debuts of all time. It’s a concept album without the prog rock pretensions yet the songs are strong enough to stand up to examination on their own. Words probably can’t describe how much I adore the album, but I’ve used more than 1300 of them to try to. Unfortunately a mark on a scale of 0-10 will have to do it.