Damien Rice is in the business of pissing people off. It’s kind of become his thing. Not to mention being pissed off himself – somewhat of a by-product. He even had a comedic yarn about being “pissed off“, during which he stressed the term repeatedly, and which was regularly unfurled before live readings of ‘Amie’, if you’re looking for exhibits.
But if anything has characterised his live shows over the past 4 years, since the release of the slow-burning-then-snowballing classic ‘O’, other than a creeping experimentalism and some breathtakingly intense performances, it is the clash of ideals in his own head. Respectful close-knit recitals on which he reared himself vs. the impersonal enormity, and restrictions, of all that his gathering popularity couldn’t avoid. At Brixton Academy in 2003 it saw him battling in real time with acceptance of the swelling, chattering mass before him, eventually treating them with rather short shrift – only to apologise later, coyly explaining his difficulties.
Which obviously pissed some people right off. But then that rather endeared Crud to him. It was encouraging to see an artist alive inside him, with values as necessary as the air he breathed, and a realisation that you couldn’t easily force a circle (O) through a awkwardly shaped (£) hole. It was a process that (perhaps premeditatedly) pissed even more people off, en masse, as he strove for extremes between unhurried solitude and amassing volcanic force, refusing to roll over into the centre and do a ‘Babylon’ or, heaven forbid, a Blunt. So the first disappointment then is that ‘9’ doesn’t reflect that progression – as if he hadn’t pissed enough people off with the wait already.
This is not a bad album, not by a long stretch. But it is kind of ordinary, comparatively. ‘O’ was different, like the most engrossing read, and when you were deep in its midst it was as if nothing existed beyond its limits, and they were sketchier than they originally appeared. Contexts were not important, it created its own. But ‘9’ is removed from that sense of organic evolution, and aside from the quality of some of these songs justifying their appearance, that his first full recorded work since his debut barely registers a shuffle, in any direction, makes this a muted success at best. This is italicised by the comparisons it begs this time with peers such as Ray LaMontagne (on the woozy string-laden ‘The Animals Were Gone’) and David Gray (the standard, chipper ‘Dogs’, for example), when before its gravity was its own.
Maybe in the context of a larger body of work this will one day make more sense, for while it lacks the cohesion, vision and inspiration of ‘O’ as a complete work, it does still contain some of his most affecting songs thus far. When he strips himself back to his core appeal – and there is a strong core appeal, that is not a mere byword for the shedding of ideas – when he is alone or in hushed company, when he relies on the inflections of his voice and the measure of his touch alone, like on the desperately fragile, gradually tender and tentatively poetic ‘Accidental Babies’, just himself and his piano, the air around you holds its breath in anticipation of every next stroke and you thank him for not muddying the waters with big ideas.
There are 3 further pillars around which the album builds its foundation. The single ‘9 Crimes’ which finds Damien’s and Lisa Hanningan’s regrets lapping up against each other unusually, the raw almost unproduced Radiohead-esque loneliness of ‘Elephant’ which erupts with such brief, rich abandon at its climax, and the rattled, looping dischord of the hypnotic ‘Me, My Yoke & I’, a kind of primal Jeff Buckley/Pearl Jam expulsion of ingrained tensions. All have traces of a strong, unique character allowing himself the freedom to move through a dark space unhindered, like a smoke ring dissipating slowly, shifting, forming temporary shapes.
There are those that this record will not piss off, but then they’re probably missing the point. There is more to Damien Rice than the pleasant, humble, and sometimes lavishly executed songs that fill in the gaps. Much more. Or at least we hope there still is. But then he’s only going to piss them off at some unspecified point in the future anyway, when he gets around to following through on his promise. Comfort can be taken, then, that he has achieved at least one artistic necessity with this album. The awkward bastard.