Damien Rice | My Favourite Faded Fantasy

It’s been eight years since we heard from Damien Rice. Who does he think he is? Desmond David Hume? Back in 2002 Rice released O which found its way into hearts and bedrooms worldwide. It was the kind of folky pop that had young adults looking gleamingly into each others eyes as Rice crooned in the background. Fueled by the ubiquitous singles “Volcano”, “Cannonball”, and especially “The Blower’s Daughter” it was hard to avoid Rice for a few years. But like the movie Closer (where “The Blower’s Daughter” gained more exposure) his music was widely applauded then suddenly dropped from our collective consciousness. Seriously, how does a movie featuring Natalie Portman as a stripper and Julia Roberts talking about blowing a guy not keep our attention? And didn’t every girl want to have their way with Clive Owen and Jude Law for a while? Ah well, all sex-fueled, pointless movies have their shelf life.

Damien Rice at least got a sequel. In 2006, the Irish singer-songwriter put out 9, an album that didn’t fare as well critically and commercially but sounded pretty damn similar to his debut with “Rootless Tree” and “Me, My Yoke, and I” as harder, louder exceptions. Pairing up with then girlfriend Lisa Hannigan, they created more beautiful back and forth vocals over sad indie folk, none more depressing than lead single “9 Crimes”; that song found itself everywhere from Grey’s Anatomy to Shrek the Third. At this point you would think Rice could have put whatever crap he wanted and someone would listen to it. You sell enough albums and you can at least get more background work in whatever Garden State rip off comes out next. But Rice….disappeared.

Minus a few live appearances and some tracks he contributed to charity compilations over the better part of a decade, Rice hasn’t released any songs since George Bush was still president. In 2006, Twitter was just created, Saddam Hussein was captured and executed, and Miley Cyrus had just started filming Hannah Montana and thankfully not showing the world all of her body parts yet. Barry Bonds broke the home run record, people spent hours watching live updates about some poor bastards stuck in a coal mine, the Crocodile Hunter died, and we were still months away from the first IPhone being released. Yeah, 2006 was a long friggin time ago.

So now after all that time Rice has conquered his demons or stopped playing Xbox or whatever the hell he was doing and wrote 100 new songs. Eight of these landed on his new release, My Favourite Faded Fantasy. And it’s impressive. The first song is the title track and apparently Rice found out in seclusion that he can sing near falsetto and sound pretty good still. I would be disappointed if this is how the entire album went, but he goes back to his deeper, Scottish voice for the rest of the album. “My Favorite Faded Fantasy” is a slow build, beginning with a moody intro that reintroduce Rice as someone that belongs in a soundtrack, beautiful violin and cello that meet up with the subtle rhythm section and eventually crescendo with a a wild harmony of vocals, horns, and and electric guitar. It seems that Rice also learned how to write more elaborate compositions while he was gone. This only becomes more evident as the album continues.

“It Takes a Lot to Know a Man” is 9 and ½ minutes to amplify this concept. It contains distorted vocal synchronization, rain storm sound effects, and a haunting mix of female vocals, piano, brass, and strings. And it just flat out works together. Some of these sounds would be rather routine in various classical recordings (probably? I’m going way out of my comfort zone on this one) but for Rice its the first time he really owns it. On his first album he ventured into Opera with “Eskimo”, but while beautiful in its own right, it that sounded more like an acoustic Rice song with Opera playing in the background; it never seamlessly blended together and to be honest, was a little over the top. Likewise songs from his sequel that focused heavily on piano (i.e. “9 Crimes” “Accidental Babies”) sounded like a guitarist fuddling with a new instrument and not sure how to sing at the same time. It may not be the case in reality, but it sure didn’t sound cohesive like it does now.

My Favourite Faded Fantasy does include some signature Rice (acoustic heavy songs) like “The Greatest Bastard” and “Colour Me In”, but the theme of this album is still a fullness of sound. When at its best, these songs are the kind of music that deserve to be listened to on a good set of headphones. I’m not an audiophile, but when music is created with 26 additional musicians and over two dozen different instruments it probably deserves better than the computer speakers you received at your office’s $20 Yankee Swap. “I Don’t Want to Change You” and “The Box” both start as acoustic guitar based tracks before growing into something more: the former includes swaying violin leading to an explosion of backing vocal “oohh’s” underlying Rice’s powerful voice, while the latter reminds us that love is hard, breakups suck, and most relationships are best for the emotional songs that they leave behind in their wake. Rice sounds intense, the violins are tight, and the trombone is bad ass. Yeah, just trust me.

“Trusty and True” has a world music feel to it; halfway through the 8 minute song you’ll start to hear a variety of instruments that I couldn’t name, then female vocals to play off Rice, before the two of them are joined by a chorus of voices that they probably borrowed from The Lion King soundtrack. My Favourite Faded Fantasy ends with “Long Long Way”, which begins with Rice getting the Imogen Heap vocal treatment, breaks down with overlapping vocals and piano in the middle, before coming back with an ethereal mix of sounds to close out the album. The best comparison that I could find for this album is The Swell Season (it even features Marketa on two songs). And while I have nothing bad to say about the former folk rock duo, this albums feels larger. Not culturally more significant, just larger. I think I undersold it a little when I said you should listen to these songs on nice headphones. You should really hear this music at Symphony Hall. But I don’t think they’ll let him play there anytime soon, and I’m not sure they would let me or anyone that would read anything I have to say through the doors anyway. But give this album a listen. A real listen. With your ears and attention and everything.

The Drink: Your classiest bottle of wine. Or box. Or jug. No judgment here.

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Bake

I'm nothing. Maybe less than nothing. I also write.

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