{"id":40987,"date":"2008-07-03T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-03T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/9-2\/"},"modified":"2008-07-03T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-03T00:00:00","slug":"9-2","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/9-2\/","title":{"rendered":"9"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice has always had a certain scruffy, raw fervor that sets him apart from the myriad soulful folk singers armed with acoustic guitars, and that\u2019s never been more evident than in his follow-up to 2002\u2019s O. <\/i>Where his debut was a soft, sonically lovely and lyrically lush affair, 9, <\/i>released in 2006, <\/i>has a sort of burning desperation to it, thanks to Rice\u2019s rangy vocals, the lyrical bloodlust, and his assistance from singer Lisa Hannigan (though unfortunately much less on this album), whose hushed voice provides a haunting weight to the unbridled passion of the material covered here. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

9 <\/i>launches out with \u201c9 Crimes,\u201d which is light-years apart from O<\/i>\u2019s standout cut, the light, sweeping \u201cThe Blower\u2019s Daughter:\u201d combining quiet trickles of piano and crescendoing strings with dueling vocals from Hannigan and Rice, this track is achingly gorgeous, and it\u2019s a perfect set-up for the album\u2019s vacillation between lovelorn reminiscences and raging jealousy. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Animals Were Gone\u201d continues in the vein of almost painful intimacy with lines like \u201cI love your depression and your double chin \/ I love almost everything you bring to this offering” and its refrain, \u201cWaking up without you is like drinking from an empty cup.\u201d It\u2019s an unconventional love song, but the gauzy, string-laden backdrop gives the track a sense of dreaminess, and as always, Rice\u2019s soaring, scraping vocals have a way of getting in under your skin and staying there. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

But for me, the most indelible cut off of this disc is \u201cRootless Tree,\u201d a blistering, surprisingly accessible lambast of an ex-girlfriend with the unforgettable chorus, \u201cFuck you, fuck you, fuck you and all we\u2019ve been through \/ I said leave it, leave it, leave it \/ It\u2019s nothing to you,\u201d all set to raw, electric instrumentation. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u201cMe, My Yoke, and I\u201d is another slow-burner, combining distorted, black-edged vocals, scraping guitar riffs, and unrelenting drums that all make way for the obtuse, religious-centered lyrics and the almost manically delivered refrain, \u201cI\u2019m mad, I\u2019m mad, I\u2019m mad \/ Like a big dog, yeah.\u201d It\u2019s more than a little bit unhinged, but it\u2019s this unrestrained intensity that makes Rice so endearing, and material like this is a nice step from his lovely but much less edgy debut.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

More muted with its looping acoustic guitar lines and signature strings, \u201cDogs\u201d is a sweetly spare ode to \u201cThe girl that does yoga\u201d who \u201clives with an orange tree \/ Got a wolf to keep her warm \/ When he comes over, she gives, he gets without anything to see.\u201d <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Only the last couple of tracks are a little less engaging for their loss of energy: \u201cAccidental Babies\u201d is lyrically stunning but the stilted moodiness of the instrumentation is to exhausting for this song\u2019s six-minute runtime; meanwhile, closer \u201cSleep Don\u2019t Weep\u201d drowns in its own melancholy, and after the first few minutes blurs out to a droning, single-note instrumental for the remaining fifteen.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

At its best, 9 <\/i>is seductive and almost uncomfortably familiar, and Rice\u2019s voice, for its occasional straining, is nevertheless stunning in its frankness and passion. Still, the album does tend to dip towards navel-gazing towards the end, which is much more of a disappointment after seeing what kinds of songs Rice is capable of crafting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":29412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7668],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-40987","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-damien-rice","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/40987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=40987"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=40987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}