You know how it feels like when the lover you'd always thought was sweet and shy suddenly surprises you with an ardent ferocity that is at once disconcerting, but also kind of exhilarating? No? Ok, neither do I. But if we did, I'd guess that it would feel a little like last night's Damien Rice concert. So this is one of my all-time favorite singer-songwriters, and I've always loved the tremulous, spare beauty of his music. But last night, there were moments when I thought I had walked into a manic-depressive's intense rock haven. And we're talking head-bangingly intense...Jude and I had bought tickets for the concert the moment they went on sale, but the week after, he discovered that he had to go for this conference in Philly. I thought I was going to have to go alone, but I found out that Billie's a fan too so last night became a little of a girls' night out :) After an excruciatingly long hour and a half wait, our patience was rewarded with the soulful strains of "9 Crimes" as Damien Rice appeared sitting softly and simply on the piano. His voice ringing loud and clear, and intensifying in passion as the song progressed, I soon discovered a depth and robustness to him that isn't always apparent on his studio recordings. This came through on his harder tracks like "Rootless Tree" and "Coconut", and I was like, "Huh?", I thought this was a Damien Rice concert? Did we buy tickets for Radiohead?"
His best songs were the ones that came with a narrative- you see him standing there, mumbling and grasping for words in that awkward but kinda endearingly dorky way, and you want to just go over, smooth this hair over, give him a hug and tell him that everything's going to be ok. There was some story about how grass inspired him to write his only happy song ("Dogs"); something about milk, cereal, crows and breaking a hole in your neighbor's wall ("Eskimo"); and the one about his brief flirtation with a girl at a supermarket that resulted in a song that could have been pleasurable at one point, but ended up all laceratingly painful in the end ("Professor").
Then it happened. The stage got all quiet and dark, and just a single light fell on him. And I heard the opening chords... I turned to Billie and almost ripped her arm off. He was singing "Delicate". It's one of those moments when something magical is unfolding before you while everything else is just kinda suspended in some kind of freeze-frame. All I could do really was smile and kinda go *sigh*... It was beautiful.
The encore was pretty good- he did "Cannonball" as I expected, but without back-up or a mike, so all the longing, ache, and rawness, if you will, really resonated. And then there was "Unplayed Piano" for Aung Sang Suu Kyi (see video), and the absolute crowd favorite, "The Blower's Daughter". But what took the cake was when everyone left the stage and he was all alone; some random guy came up, gave him a glass of wine and lit him a cigarette. All languorous and boozy, he hammed it up for the audience with "Cheers Darlin'", and you could almost believe the persona of a debauched alcoholic... if only the cigarette didn't go out three times ;) And at that moment, you could sense that all the women in the audience were completely and utterly smitten, swooningly reduced to 11-year-olds having their first blushing schoolgirl crush, while all the men stood there wishing they could write and play their own music so that all the schoolgirls would love them instead.
He was very simply, quite awesome :)
I don't write happy songs. When I'm happy, I'm enjoying being happy.
-Damien Rice
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