Damien Rice - My Favourite Faded Fantasy
I'd like to think that I have very wide ranging musical tastes, so my CD collection (yes, I still have those) contains work from artists as varied as Tori Amos, The Flaming Lips, Lou Reed, Elton John, Public Sector Broadcasting, Justin Currie, Paolo Nutini, The Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Polly Scattergood, Guns N' Roses, Leonard Cohen, One Eskimo and Yazoo. However, I've always been particularly partial to guitar-led singer-song writers, whether acoustic or backed by lush strings and an orchestra.
Like most people I first came across Damien Rice around 2002 / 2003 through his debut "O", and specifically the singles "Cannonball" and "The Blower's Daughter", which have both been covered numerous times in the intervening years. I really enjoyed the two songs, but to be honest the rest of it didn't really set me alight, so I filed it on the shelf under "okay" and moved on.
A second album, "9" followed in 2006 but completely passed me by. It can't have been very well promoted, or I wasn't looking out for it. In any case it came and went and I was none the wiser.
Over the last couple of years, I've taken to looking through my old music purchases (whether physical or digital) and then 'Googling' some of the lesser known artist's to see if they have produced any new material. I don't frequent shops like HMV like I used to in my youth and I don't follow any of the music press publications, so this has been one of the ways I've found to discover new music by these performers. When late last year through this process I learned that Damien Rice had finally released a third album after an eight year gap, I was intrigued, but I recalled not being wowed by his first effort.
Anyway, as the CD of "O" was still sitting there on the shelf (I'm terrible at getting rid of things), I though I would give it another listen and to my surprise, I liked it a lot more than I remembered. A lot more. This was damn good stuff. What had I been thinking back in 2003? Noticing that the download version of the new album was on special offer, I took a risk and bought it...
Consider me impressed. What this new work shows is someone truly laying their soul bare after a terrible relationship breakup and confessing that, well, much of it was their fault. It's intimate. It's melancholic. Brutally honest. Yet at times it's also incredibly uplifting. These aren't three minute pop songs designed to give you a quick buzz. Rice allows things to build - to rise and fall and rise again. "It Takes A Lot To Know A Man" is over nine minutes long and it needs it. All eight tracks deserve to be listened as a whole rather than piecemeal.
Titles such as "I Don't Want To Change You" show where he is coming from with the introspection and self-blame, but there are also tiny glimpses into the raw hurt. During "The Greatest Bastard" he sings 'You helped me learn how to forgive. Didn't you? I wish that I could say the same'. There is some anger there.
My absolute favourite is "The Box" - a defiant song about not fitting into the role that others want for you. Now this might be about some of the causes of the breakdown of a relationship, or not conforming to the neat little definitions that modern society tries to impose, or Rice's self-imposed exile to Iceland - or even about the inner conflict of looking in the mirror and saying to yourself "Right. Enough is enough. Time to change". The exact meaning doesn't matter. The song is just hauntingly beautiful - starting off with a sparse guitar and then building and building as the orchestra filters in. At one point the strings overwhelm the vocals, almost drowning them out as if Rice felt himself sinking before climbing back out of a well. It's incredible stuff.
Look, we all know that music is incredibly personally subjective. One person's all time best song will make another person's ears bleed. That's fine. The world would be a boring place if we all liked the same thing. Music has to speak to you and this collection definitely did that for me. If you like heart wrenching melodies, bitter-sweet guitar work and lush orchestral arrangements that will give you goosebumps, then this is the album for you.
"I have tried but I don't fit. Into this box you call a gift.
When I could be wild and free. But god forbid then you might envy me"
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