Daniel Kemp's Album Reviews
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Damien Rice
 
A load of cannonballs!
Albums
 
9 (2006)
 
 
6.5/10
 
Producer: Damien Rice
 
  1. 9 Crimes
  2. The Animals Were Gone
  3. Elephant
  4. Rootless Tree
  5. Dogs
  6. Coconut Skins
  7. Me, My Yoke & I
  8. Grey Room
  9. Accidental Babies
  10. Sleep Don’t Weep
9 is the second studio album by Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice.  His debut album, O, made quite an impact upon release and Damien Rice was hotly tipped as the latest King of Pain.  I can second that, as he does seem to enjoy a good whinge.
 

The opening track, 9 Crimes, is as good an opener as any.  Fellow Irish folkie Lisa Hannigan contributes some wonderful vocals to 9 Crimes, almost threatening to eclipse Rice’s efforts with her fragile voiceover.  Both of their performances are heartfelt and your attention is drawn to the lyrics, the music merely providing a vehicle for their story of loss.  It’s a real gem and is of exceedingly high quality.  But perhaps it sets the bar a little too high, as the rest of the album struggles to reach similar standards.
 
The Animals Were Gone is one of the better songs from 9.  It evokes memories of Nick Drake, but it perhaps lacks his honest and bare emotion.  The orchestration is second to none and flows really well.  Again, it is Lisa Hannigan who truly shines and her backing vocals are out of this world.
 

I don’t think all that much of Elephant.  It really drags out its running time, slowly pulling you under with Rice’s misery.  Musically, it is stripped bare and has basic production values, but it is really for the best with this kind of music.  Towards the end of its running time it does get exciting and explodes into a fury of noise, but I doubt that many of you are still listening by the time it reaches this point.  Rootless Tree was taken as a single from the album.  The chorus is very explicit, needlessly so in my opinion, “F*ck you, f*ck you, f*ck you and all we’ve been through!” Despite this, it is one of the more obviously commercial tracks on 9 and provides a good outlet for Rice to exorcise his Demons of Angst.
 

I find the back to basics strumming of Coconut Skins extremely gratifying.  Occasionally during 9, Damien Rice arranges his songs in a needlessly minimalist way, but Coconut Skins is an all guns out acoustic assault.  Perhaps it’s best to just let these natural disasters take place, rather than to try to water everything down and make them more palatable? Just a thought!  A little birdie tells me that Me, My Yoke & I is an ode to Damien Rice discovering masturbation as a teenager.  His favourite past-time obviously stuck with him, so much so that he felt he had to tell us all about it.  Musically, I bleeding well hate this song.  An annoying slide guitar repeats itself and creates the effect of a killer bee zooming in and out of ear shot.  There is also an unnecessary distortion effect on Rice’s vocals which make me want to rip his voice box from his throat and jump up and down on it.  I’m not a violent person, honest.
 

Grey Room is a return to the melancholia of The Animals Were Gone.  If you haven’t realised as of yet, I have a real soft spot for Lisa Hannigan’s vocals and I firmly believe that the songs which are the most effective feature her backing.  Rice sounds dreadfully sad as he sings, “Wait for me child, even a smile would do for now...” The orchestration rises and falls during the verses, aiding his words no end.  I’m in two minds about Accidental Babies.  The title is genius, of course, and the piano chords possess a very sorrowful charm.  However, the lyrics seem to go into overkill with their self-deprecating misery.  So, unfortunately, when Rice is giving with one hand, he is taking away with the other. Meh.
 

Sleep Don’t Weep is definitely the most basic recording on the album.  Very peaceful and modest is its instrumentation; it eventually leads into Damien Rice ‘playing’ wine glasses for over 15 minutes and the last thing we hear from him is his continued whispering in a foreign language.  I really enjoy his vocals during the song; they have a real down-to-earth quality about them.
 

9 is a good enough album, but it does little to genuinely challenge or excite the listener.  It is very pleasant and the songs which work best are those on which both Rice and Hannigan are singing.  However, the album does tend to plummet where quality is concerned when Rice simply tries too hard to sell us his stories of loss.
 
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