[Accidental Baby]

acousticguitar.com had a review of the album online, but it seems they've taken it offline again. Luckily, there's Google cache.

"In the eight years since Damien Rice released his second album, 9, a cottage industry of sensitive, Starbucks-approved indie singer-songwriters emerged and then exploded into the teen-pop mainstream with the arrival of Rice-acolyte Ed Sheeran, who graces the cover of our December edition. You can almost imagine Rice hovering in the wings with a furrowed brow, sullenly wringing his hands, thinking, “Please, please, relieve me of this writer’s block.”
Rice has been spared. And the depth and scope of music on his third full-length studio album proves that however seductive the songs of his legion of followers are, Rice’s signature mix of acoustic guitars and strings, loops and layers, and achingly raw confessionals is inimitable. If 2006’s 9 was a slight letdown from Rice’s sublime 2003 debut O, his more mature new album puts the singer and guitarist firmly back in the ring.
Bookended by a pair of hazy, atmospheric pieces—the title song and “Long Long Way”—and fleshed out with sparer songs featuring lots of crisp fingerpicking and swelling strings, the centerpiece of My Favourite Faded Fantasy is the one-two punch of “The Greatest Bastard” and “I Don’t Want to Change You.” The former, over gently picked guitar, is quintessential Rice, questioning a series of statements that are at once self-congratulatory and self-deprecating, and with a wisdom that only comes with age: “I made you laugh, I made you cry, I made you open up your eyes,” he sings, and then after a thoughtful pause, “Didn’t I?”
“I Don’t Want to Change You” combines everything that makes Rice tick: dramatic strings and unadorned acoustic guitar; subtle touches of electronics, keyboards, beats, and a warm heartbeat of a bass line; aching, soulful vocals; and lyrics that burn with the passion of a confused lover. “Wherever you go, I can always follow,” he rasps, as if he’s literally bleeding on the inside. The track is likely a love song to his former musical and romantic partner, Lisa Hannigan, whom he once claimed he still loves. “If you just want to be alone, I can wait without waiting,” he continues. “And if you want me to let this go, I am more than willing. Cause I don’t want to change you. . .I don’t want to change your mind.”
Yet somehow, you get the feeling Rice would like nothing more than to change her mind.
Other standouts among the album’s eight extended songs—only one clocks in at less than five minutes, and two exceed the eight-minute mark—are “Colour Me In” (about wanting to be pulled in) and “The Box” (about feeling tied down). Both are signature Rice songs that begin gently with just guitar before building to a crescendo of strings and wailed vocals. The exotic and sensual “It Takes a Lot to Know a Man” incorporates Middle Eastern-like touches, and “Trusty and True,” with its mix of simple British-folk balladry and a joyful African-like backing choir, adds a sense of spiritual release. As for the two bookends—Rice explores a rainbow of musical and cultural traditions on those tracks, including snaky melodies, classical flirtations, raging rock, and spacey, psychedelic textures.
Ed Sheeran may have taken Rice’s place in the singer’s absence, offering up a similar sense of drama and pathos for a larger and younger audience, but he was never a replacement. After all, it’s hard to imagine Rice venturing into the arena (so to speak) of big looped beats and rap. Rice’s work depends on nuance and dynamics, depth and scope. And after nearly a decade in the waiting, My Favourite Faded Fantasy delivers all of that in a set of scorching tracks of long-dormant anguish finally set free."