Album Review: 9 by Damien Rice
The world was recently bombarded with new releases from reputable acts across the globe. Alexisonfire proved they can mean 'serious business' with Crisis, Deftones once again reign the throne of 'most intelligent heavy meta band with Saturday Night Wrists, The Black Parade showed that My Chemical Romance are worthy of pulling a Queen theatric and Sparta's back in the fold with a much-welcomed maturity showcased in Three.
Flipping the other side of the coin, the singer/songwriter realm isn't enjoying much of the mentioned optimism. Association with such tags as 'sef-indulgement', 'woe-is-me', and the likes of it can't do much good to the whole genre. Unless you're playing in a band, represented by a logo of a bleeding heart. That'll sell like condoms on spring break.
Few in recent times have avoided the cliched potholes. The likes of Damon Gough, Sondre Lerche, Rufus Wainwright, Tim Kasher and Conor Oberst are genuinely blessed with a sense of vision that set them apart from their contemporary peers. Damon's penchant for evoking the child-like innocence in us is impeccably charming that beneath all the sweetest surrenders, lies a complicated foundation of instrumentation and gadget wizardry as a common feature in most of his beautific ditties. While most singer/songwriter greats are somewhat sounding alike , Kasher and Oberst paved a way for restless indie kids who just can't sit still in bored silence to appreciate this undermined genre by incorporating fresh electronic bleeps and angular arrangements in their compositions. Still for those with acquired taste, a hero is yet to emerge.
Then sometime ago, an Irish lad dropped the bomb and stole the hearts of many with his debut offering. It was plainly titled O.
Taking the music scene by storm, Damien Rice was
already a household name by the time his poignant love ballad,
Cannonball hit airwaves the world over. No one was prepared for his
blend of soft/loud folk-rock. It's the kind that sweeps you off your
feet when you're not looking, the kind that melts your heart without
you even knowing. The debut received rave reviews and critics were left
standing on their feet that this was finally, the arrival of the next
best thing.
If O can be safely claimed as the sort of music to croon to while shacked up in an igloo, then 9 is the bible for up-and-coming stalwarts of this genre. There's a lot to offer at the table with Rice expanding his palette even to the extent of the swirling strings of the 50's evidently on The Animals Were Gone. Honestly, yours truly to this very day, fails to grasp the whole hype behind The Blower's Daughter. It was plainly plain with formulaic melodies and lines that made it rather uninspiring if not ambitiously weak. As if a shrewd marketeer, he drops another Blower's Daughter in the form of Elephant. Instead of repeating himself, Elephant's a far more superior beast than its predecessor with Rice pulling all the right stops by shifting the song from smoky pub hymn to stadium arena anthem at a drop of a dime to glorious effect.
Well then, is he still the lauded phenom he was once claimed as? That's for you to judge and for us to ponder.
If you're familiar with the man, than Rootless Tree, Dogs, Me, My Yoke And I quaifies as instant highlights of this album. New fans? This might be something easy to consume even, but bask yourself in this and you'll be amazed at what the magic number 9 can do to you.
