Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 06/11/06
Label: 14th Floor

Listening to Damien Rice is heavy work. Akin to being backed into a corner in a pub in Dublin's Temple Bar by a drunken gap year poet who aims to batter you loudly into submission with his expert knowledge of both wimmun and Joyce. Barefoot and stamping, the alleged beau of Renee Zellweger leads us though ten spittle-flecked slices of singer-songwriterly angst destined to end up both in Gwyneth Paltrow's Christmas stocking and on the soundtrack of the next Jude Law film.

"9" picks up where the ubiquitous and two-million selling "O" left off. Hoarse howling to acoustic guitar strumming; folksy plucking to bleeding heart mutterings; Radiohead-a-like moments pull of portentous, look-at-me pauses and full band crescendos. It breaks you in gently, though, as it's Rice's long -term musical partner Lisa Hannigan who opens proceedings, delivering the opening verse of "9 Crimes" to soft solo piano. Enter Rice, a cello, and it's "The Blower's Daughter" all over again.

Hannigan's contributions are again faultlessly beautiful: her understated yet full-hearted tones weave in and out, sometimes mid-sentence, often barely in the mix. Without her, there's no doubt the Kildare crooner would be a far less interesting proposition. The man who gave the world the too-much-information line "There's still a little bit of your taste in my mouth" ("O"'s "Cannonball") remains as obsessed with bodily matters as ever. "Do you clean your teeth before you kiss?" he asks in "Accidental Babies" of a lost love with a new boyfriend.

Wryly perceptive maybe, but honestly "Do you miss my smell?" is just begging for the sort of puerile riposte we're far too mature to type here. There's nothing pretty about "Coconut Skins"' lengthy outro of boozy, boorish "Ugh-la-la-rah-rah-la..."s nor the ear-shredding "Me, My Yoke And I" which sounds like Paul Simon trying to do Led Zeppelin, either. Yet for all the raw, rough integrity Rice wears like a grubby t-shirt (He's shy! He designs his own artwork!) there's a shrewd self-promoter at work here.

His own obscure label is licensed to a slightly less obscure one, 14th Floor - but it's Warners who bankroll the billboards. And, truly, he is as full of ladykilling Blarney as George Best. "9" ripples with lines cynically designed to extort cash and favourable blog entries out of serial monogamists approaching their third outing as bridesmaid. "I love your depression and your double chin," schmoozes "The Animals Were Gone", promising later "We can make babies". It's official: Damien Rice is the new chocolate.

    by Anna Britten