ALONG COMES MARY

Damien Rice has been such a breath of fresh air to the sometimes overly pop & “indy” music line up on the radio. Since hitting the scene in 2002 with his magnificent debut album, O, featuring the hit, The Blower’s Daughter (featured in the Oscar nominated film, Closer), Rice has stayed true to his form & able to avoid signing to a major record label while continuing to play his coffee-house style songs in much larger settings, like he will do when he returns to The Greek Theatre this Friday.

While O introduced us to such beautiful, lush songs like Volcano & I Remember, & immediately brought  to mind such musicians as Jeff Buckley & Leonard Cohen, Rice has remained one of the best folk-rock artists around today. When I first got O, I knew he was something special; at times, cryptic & odd with moments like “Eskimo” & heartbreaking on confessional songs like Cannonball (“And stones taught me to fly/Love, it taught me to lie/Life, taught me to die/So it’s not hard to fall/When you float like a cannon”), he was able to transform you to an intimate world of love, loss & characters you might encounter at a pub in his homeland of Ireland. I hadn’t felt like that since I had first heard Jeff Buckley’s Grace.

When he returned in 2006 with “9”, more heartache & rebirth was in store, especially on numbers like 9 Crimes, a grueling duet with his former back up singer, Lisa Hannigan, telling the story of cheating:  “Leave me out with the waste/This is not what I do/It’s the wrong kind of place/To be cheating on you/It’s the wrong time/She’s pulling me through/It’s a small crime/And I’ve got no excuse.” & Rice was not spared with Hollywood gossip & whispers, as word is he was dating Renee Zellweger & writing “Dogs”, causing speculation it was for Zellweger, it went, “Like a morning sun/Like a morning/Like a morning sun/Good good morning sun/The girl that does yoga/When we come over/Girl that does yoga.”

With his new release, My Favourite Faded Fantasy (I love that he’s stepped away from one letter or number titles), I feel its his most mellow effort to date, perfect for a quiet Sunday morning, or having on while reading a book on a rainy day. Never bland or repetitive with his lyrics, his writing is stunning on this album. Think no further than The Box, as he sings, “And 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”  or on the first single, I Don’t Want to Change You, “Wherever you are/Well, know that I adore you/No matter how far/Well, I can go before you/And if ever you need someone/Well, not that you need helping/But if ever you want someone/I know that I am willing.”

I cannot wait to see what Damien Rice has in store for Los Angeles, click here to get your tickets & I will see you at The Greek this week! xo

(*Disclosure: I am being provided with credentials to see Damien Rice. All opinions are my own & my poor Mom, whom I was speaking to when I got the confirmation I’d be covering the show, as I screamed into the phone.)