THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE UGLY AND THE BEAUTIFUL

Modern Folk Revelations With Damien Rice

Damien Rice is one of the most successful and also most unusual figures in modern folk music. Trends leave him cold, and although he has only issued three solo albums over two decades, his songs are already part of the contemporary folk canon. His compositions have an outstanding sense of drama, from moments of fragile vulnerability to cathartic heights, while his melodies have the feel of music that is long familiar. Here we take a look at the Irish multi-instrumentalist and singer, who retired for years while his records sold millions, before once again permitting us an unsettlingly deep insight into his life. We can soon experience his music live at Bartók Spring.

By András Rónai

Damien Rice was born in Dublin in 1973, and formed the rock band Juniper with his friends at the age of eighteen. The group signed a six-album deal with Polygram, but after two successful singles Rice found the limits imposed by the label on his artistic freedom intolerable, quitting in 1998. In spring of the following year he went as far as Tuscany, working as a farmer for six months. In the meantime he began writing songs again, which by his return to Dublin at the end of the year he had come to regard as his second chance at a music career. Thanks to his second cousin

SHACKLED BY FAME

Rice intended to release one album’s worth of his songs on his own label, but the success of the 2002 album O surpassed all expectations in the uk , and the record then found its way to the United States.

The initial low level of confidence about the album is illustrated by a story Rice told in an interview with Hot Press in 2009. Asking his musical partners if they would prefer a share of revenues from the album or a one-off payment of £100 a song, the session bass guitarist, Shane Fitzsimons, chose the latter as the safer option. (Rice would later grant him the share of profits preferred by the others.)

While initially Rice managed the affairs of his record label, success inevitably made it necessary to involve a bigger label – and the singer once again faced the expectations attached to an established performer. ‘[My] artistic side was kicking up a storm inside, saying, “You’re only doing this because you’re giving in to other people’s desires to have you sell more records”’, he recalled in an interview with The Guardian in connection with a request when he was asked to remix his song for radio.

Rice toured with the album for almost three years, but on returning home he felt huge pressure bearing down on him as the label expected a follow-up. He reluctantly conceded, but the result was a bitter pill. His second album was released to a mixed critical reception under the title 9, the studio work which he later described to The Guardian as ‘hell’, though adding, ‘Here’s something I’ve gotten very clear about: I made it hell.’

FOR WHOM HE’D GIVE EVERYTHING

During recordings for the album and the subsequent tour, disagreements became frequent between Rice and the singer Lisa Hannigan, whose friendship and professional relationship had developed over the years into a romantic one. Eventually in 2007, in the heat of an argument immediately before a concert in Munich, Rice lost his head and fired Hannigan, who embarked on a solo career that same year. In the aforementioned interview with Hot Press, he spoke about how this was his greatest regret in life, ‘I would give away all of the music success, all the songs, and the whole experience to still have Lisa in my life.’ (Their work together is so emblematic – as on their duet on Volcano – that a possible reconciliation remains a hot topic in the music press to this day.)

Rice then vanished from public view again for years. ‘I did all kinds of things. Scuba diving in the brain,… I went to schools for cleaning my mind’, he recalled of this period to The Guardian. In a radio interview with kcrw in 2014, he explained how he worked to overcome his preconceptions, for example by freeing himself from the axioms carried by words like ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘ugly’ and ‘beautiful’. He also spoke about how he learned to view the world with understanding and humour. It was then that he released his third album, My Favourite Faded Fantasy, overseen by three-time Grammy Award–winning producer Rick Rubin, who asked him to come to the studio even on days when he wasn’t in the mood. Rice says Rubin’s method helped him to get over the feeling of only needing to make music when his prevailing emotions dictate it.

Complete With Contradictions

Catchy melodies, revealing lyrics that offer points of identification, instrumentation that seems timeless, and a powerful sense of drama: all things that have always been needed in pop music, and so Damien Rice’s huge success is hardly surprising. His first album went quadruple platinum in the uk , his second double, while the third was certified silver. His songs have been heard in Hollywood movies, and are regularly sung in talent shows. Girl group Little Mix, winners of the eighth series of the British X Factor, had their first major success in 2011 with a cover of Cannonball, the second single from Rice’s debut album – which prompted the song to eventually rose to the top of the uk and Irish singles charts almost a decade after its original release.

Since the record industry began, the freshness of performers has tended to be judged based on the frequency of their appearances, but in this sense Rice is also eccentric since he does not communicate only through the records he releases at sporadic intervals. When he has something to say, he speaks about his life in perplexingly revealing interviews. It is these apparent contradictions that make the unique figure of Damien Rice complete.

The singer’s last album came out nine years ago, and there’s no indication of when his most recent song Astronaut, included on the 2022 charity compilation The Busk Record, might be followed by new material. What we can be sure of is that the upcoming concert is a great opportunity to get to know one of the most interesting figures in 21st century folk music in a live setting.