Damien Rice: O : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Ostensibly from the singer-songwriter school, Damien Rice, who hails from Ireland, exhibits few of that genre's confessional impulses and none of its folky earnestness. His acoustic guitar deploys an arsenal of lush, dramatic effects, and his voice and lyrics draw inspiration from such self-concealing obsessives as Thom Yorke, Elliott Smith and -- a now-ubiquitous influence -- Jeff Buckley. On O, his debut album, Rice elongates his delicate melodies nearly to the breaking point, an effect that mirrors the desperate search for love and meaning in songs such as "Volcano." Lisa Hannigan's breathy vocals and Vyvienne Long's sonorous cello often shadow Rice as he sings, like remembered or imagined counterparts in an unending internal conversation. Does this album's title suggest a perfect circle, an orgasm or just the void that haunts even the deepest relationships? All that and more in songs that, for all their quietness, leave a dark, lasting impression.

ANTHONY DECURTIS
(RS 926, July 10, 2003)