Good Or Shit: Why 'Music Arseholes' Are Wrong About Damien Rice

9 November 2014 | 9:09 am | Liz Galinovic

"At work, I now only communicate in Damien lyrics."

Damien Rice

Damien Rice

There is a particular playlist on Spotify l dredge up when I’m at a loss and have a feel for something folky and atmospheric.

Also, I think I do it because it makes me laugh.

It’s called Lost in the Woods, and invites you to “Lose yourself in dark, swirling folk from the deepest depths of the forest.”

Haha. Hahaha.

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One morning last week, as the second alarm tried to break through to me, for the first since it started getting cold over here, and mornings still feel like nights, and I’ve been sleeping through two alarms until they completely ring out and then unconsciously switching the third and the fourth one off – I opened my eyes and jumped out of bed.

Monday November 3rd, 2014. The day I’d been waiting for.

Straight to the laptop, I switched it on, made the purchase, and then jumped in the shower so that when I go out, it would’ve downloaded.

I’d been devouring anything with lots of guitar, emotive melody, gutsy vocals, build-ups and crescendos. I’d been craving it. Long before my workmate even asked me if I’d heard his new song.

Whose album release could get me out of bed on a cold northern hemisphere morning before the third and fourth alarm had even gone off?

Damien Rice. From here on, just Damien.

My Favourite Faded Fantasy, the first album in eight years since he fired Lisa Hannigan and racked off to Iceland, is everything I need in my life.

I’m woods deep.

Go on, judge me. Music arseholes – you know, those types who jump up and down, red-faced, spit flying all over the joint as they pontificate; or the ones who simply look at you with a bitchy school-girl faces – always come out of the woodwork when you mention Damien. Like they know what kind of person you both are (you ... and Damien) and it’s sad and pathetic. 

Normally I shrug this shit off. But when it comes to Damien, I have to quash the urge to be a music arsehole myself.

“He’s so whiny,” a friend said to me once. You’re whiny, I thought, while I glared at her. Listen to you, carrying on like that about a musician who plays my soul like it’s a damn string instrument.

“Mmm. I don’t really get into Damien Rice.” My flatmate said. “That’s cool”, I said, shrugging. That’s because you have no emotions you fricken sociopath.

 “O had a distinct, entrancing hint of small-hours weirdness about it, but it nevertheless contained the kind of songs that people play at their weddings, or that appear on the soundtracks of big US TV dramas, or get chosen as The X Factor finalist’s debut single.” Wrote the Guardian.

Why wouldn’t you want to play Damien at your wedding? I thought, incensed. Why does he seem to be saying that Damien’s songs, each one like a perfectly crafted piece of furniture, intricate detail carved into the wood by hand, are something to shrug the shoulders over simply because they have a commercial appeal?

I discovered Damien a couple of years after O’s release. Since then, I’ve played it countless times. If I’m hurting, or if I’m happily cooking. 

One of my closest friends and I bonded over that album; picking out which songs meant what to us, quoting lyrics that summed up who we were and how we viewed ourselves at that time.

I Remember is my song,” my workmate told me. “Whenever I’m fighting with my partner, I just have to listen to it a few times and then I come away thinking, No. No I’m right, and I’m going to fight this.

Well, good news everyone, Damien is still full of anguish and I’ve got My Favourite Faded Fantasy on repeat, forced to put my book away on the train the other morning because I was getting lost in the music’s stories. Pausing in the street to catch my breath because just when I thought The Box couldn’t get any more profound, it exploded into a crescendo that was as blissful as it was agonising.

The Box 

“It’s too much.” My mate said. “Oh yeah”, I replied. You empty soulless husk.

“I always shied away from Damien Rice because I thought he was too slow.” Another friend tells me. “Fair enough,” I said. You’re obviously too afraid to slow down and actually feel something.

I listen to The Greatest Bastard, the lilting melody, the lyrics, all the more cutting for their honest simplicity. Damien doesn’t need a thesaurus and game-changing instrumentation. Give him a guitar and some raw honesty and anyone who has ever tried to make a relationship work until the horse was good and properly dead, will find this hard to listen to.

The Greatest Bastard

At work, I now only communicate in Damien lyrics.

Am I the greatest bastard you ever met, Lisa? The only one you can't forget? Am I the one your truth's been waiting for? – Is my response to Lisa’s email about website updates.

Calm down Liz and remember, wherever you are, know that I adore you – my manager chimes in.

I am moved in one way or another by every song on this album but none more so than its title track which, in my opinion, is the best love song since Leonard Cohen asked me to dance him to my beauty like a burning violin.

It perfectly encapsulates love’s profound intensity, so overwhelming it’s almost indistinguishable from pain. The bliss that comes with the knowing, the danger that comes with the relinquishment.

It also has a mind-blowing explosion of sound towards the end.

My Favourite Faded Fantasy

Listening to Damien isn’t like being deep in the woods. It’s like standing on the edge of a cliff, on an overcast day, looking out to sea as the wind blows your hair about.

Haha. Hahaha.