Banjaxed
10-22-2004, 12:14 PM
Here's the text of the smh.com.au interview that's linked on the news page. you have to register to see it, so i thought i'd save you all the hassle.
by the way, here'sa good website that provides usernames and passwords for free websites, so you don't have to register.
www.bugmenot.com (http://www.bugmenot.com)
Damien Rice, Metro
By Bruce Elder
October 22, 2004
October 19
There has always been a problem with terminology when it comes to singers who write their own songs and perform them on acoustic guitar. Singer/songwriter? Folk-influenced?
What if these performers, like Damien Rice, sometimes play so damned loud, and employ such a barrage of experimental backing tapes, that they sound like a one-man answer to the Blizzard of Oz?
What if their material is predominantly about the nature of love and ranges from delicately crafted ballads (The Blower's Daughter) to wry eccentricities (Cheers Darlin') - and there isn't a folk song in sight?
And where is the category for a singer who, leaving his cellist (Vyvienne Long) and female vocal sidekick (Lisa Hannigan) at home in Ireland, calls upon the services of Missy Higgins, this year's ARIA winner for the best pop release, and then sings a wildly eccentric, acoustic duet version of Prince's When Doves Cry?
Damien Rice seems to be in the business of breaking rules. On the surface he is a man with a slightly hippie disposition who writes melancholy songs about the heartache and pain of love and who has a finely-honed understanding of the power of musical light and shade.
He moves effortlessly from near silence to roars of distorted sound and, within a song, he can move from violent, passionate strumming to almost whispered vocals.
Given the right environment - and the Metro was a perfect venue - he is extraordinary. He can silence a capacity audience by nothing more sophisticated than playing and singing very softly, as he did on the evening's opening song The Blower's Daughter Part 2. When he sang the wonderfully eccentric Eskimo and his gorgeously tender hit Cannonball, the audience, without any prompting, sang along with passion and genuine affection.
Without the enriching melancholia of Long's cello and Hannigan's vocals, Rice finds himself radically reinterpreting his material. The opera singer on Eskimo is replaced by Rice himself singing in Finnish. The strings on Amie become backing tapes played so loud and with such distortion that the building vibrates. He reveals himself as a true experimenter who belongs much more comfortably in the Tim and Jeff Buckley camp than with the pop smoothness of, say, David Gray.
Missy Higgins was greeted with wild enthusiasm when she performed a short set before Rice's appearance, but she joined him on Volcano and was happy to gulp down a few glasses of wine to add verisimilitude to a funny, sexy rendition of Cheers Darlin'.
by the way, here'sa good website that provides usernames and passwords for free websites, so you don't have to register.
www.bugmenot.com (http://www.bugmenot.com)
Damien Rice, Metro
By Bruce Elder
October 22, 2004
October 19
There has always been a problem with terminology when it comes to singers who write their own songs and perform them on acoustic guitar. Singer/songwriter? Folk-influenced?
What if these performers, like Damien Rice, sometimes play so damned loud, and employ such a barrage of experimental backing tapes, that they sound like a one-man answer to the Blizzard of Oz?
What if their material is predominantly about the nature of love and ranges from delicately crafted ballads (The Blower's Daughter) to wry eccentricities (Cheers Darlin') - and there isn't a folk song in sight?
And where is the category for a singer who, leaving his cellist (Vyvienne Long) and female vocal sidekick (Lisa Hannigan) at home in Ireland, calls upon the services of Missy Higgins, this year's ARIA winner for the best pop release, and then sings a wildly eccentric, acoustic duet version of Prince's When Doves Cry?
Damien Rice seems to be in the business of breaking rules. On the surface he is a man with a slightly hippie disposition who writes melancholy songs about the heartache and pain of love and who has a finely-honed understanding of the power of musical light and shade.
He moves effortlessly from near silence to roars of distorted sound and, within a song, he can move from violent, passionate strumming to almost whispered vocals.
Given the right environment - and the Metro was a perfect venue - he is extraordinary. He can silence a capacity audience by nothing more sophisticated than playing and singing very softly, as he did on the evening's opening song The Blower's Daughter Part 2. When he sang the wonderfully eccentric Eskimo and his gorgeously tender hit Cannonball, the audience, without any prompting, sang along with passion and genuine affection.
Without the enriching melancholia of Long's cello and Hannigan's vocals, Rice finds himself radically reinterpreting his material. The opera singer on Eskimo is replaced by Rice himself singing in Finnish. The strings on Amie become backing tapes played so loud and with such distortion that the building vibrates. He reveals himself as a true experimenter who belongs much more comfortably in the Tim and Jeff Buckley camp than with the pop smoothness of, say, David Gray.
Missy Higgins was greeted with wild enthusiasm when she performed a short set before Rice's appearance, but she joined him on Volcano and was happy to gulp down a few glasses of wine to add verisimilitude to a funny, sexy rendition of Cheers Darlin'.