Shriek of the Week, Vol. 11

When Damien Rice played the Beacon Theater in New York last year, Claudia Marshall introduced him, saying that on his debut album, O, one would find all the angst and sexual tension missing from the latest Norah Jones album. She wasn't kidding. Let's kick it off with a bang, shall we? When I went to this show, I had O darn near memorized, but had never heard the B-Sides release, where this first song is found. And to be honest, it came as a bit of a shock... there are no f-bombs on O. Damien does not mince words, the driving chorus from Woman Like A Man:

"You wanna get boned,
You wanna get stoned
You wanna get a room like no-one else
You wanna be rich
You wanna be kitch
You wanna be the bastard of yourself
You wanna get burned
You wanna get turned
You wanna get fucked inside out
You wanna be ruled
You wanna be fooled
You wanna be a woman like a man
like a woman, like a, like a man."

Ouch. But this isn't just a diatribe, behind a just-as-angry-as-the-lyrics guitar lurks a cello and soft, almost jazzy drums that just suck you right in. Check out Cheers Darlin' for a similar though a touch less angry feel. O is a bit more level-headed, there's still a lot more cello than on your typical rock record, but there are also smart lyrics and compelling tales. At the show, he told the story of Amie, staying with a platonic friend whom he hoped would be more, looking out the window beside her bed and seeing a spaceship/satellite/some other blinky object in the sky fly past (the "something unusual, something strange" in the lines below) then attempting to use it as a seduction tool:

"nothing unusual nothing strange
close to nothing at all
the same old scenario
the same old rain
and there's no explosions here
then something unusual something strange
comes from nothing at all"

It's also the only song I've ever seen performed with accompanying rhythmic gymnastics. Kooky. The edge to his songwriting was somewhat stripped for the U.S. release of Cannonball, the single chosen to make him into the next David Gray. Which didn't quite work. The album version captures the feeling of being completely wrong for the part of a lover, starting off with the good stuff that remains, "a little bit of your face I haven't kissed," "a little bit of your taste in my mouth," "a little bit of your words I long to hear," and then the fear, "a little bit of you laced with my doubt," "you step a little closer to me, so close that I can't see what's going on," and the feeling of being completely unprepared, even wrongly prepared, to handle emotions beyond the initial infatuation:

"stones taught me to fly
love taught me to lie
life, it taught me to die
so it's not hard to fall
when you float like a cannonball."

And I'm hacking him all to shreds because he says all of this so much better than I do, so well that it makes me stop and I can't think of anything else except that. As such I don't recommend it while driving. But one last song to point out, Delicate, which I've listened to about 157 times in the last few days...

"we might live
like never before
when there's nothin’ to give
how can we ask for more?

we might make love
in some sacred place
that look on your face
is delicate

so why d’ya fill my sorrow
with the words you've borrowed
from the only place you've known
why d’ya sing hallelujah
if it means nothin’ to ya
why d’ya sing with me at all?"

Before breaking out on his own, Damien sang with Bell X1 (a future shriek, to be sure). He has released both O and a compilation of B-Sides in the U.S., as well as a few singles that do include some b-sides that didn't make the B-Sides release. There are clips on the site, well worth your time, to my mind. In addition to the songs above, Volcano is worth a listen, as is I Remember, featuring his frequent collaborator Lisa Hannigan. See, there is more to Irish rock than U2... Enjoy!