Review Summary: With a tendency to sound like an ill-advised sequel to O, Damien Rice's sophomore release is exhausting and redundant.
It’s been said that Damien Rice is the “king of sad” and not only does his latest release, 9, solidify this nomenclature, it also serves to incarcerate Rice in the melancholic, with no hope for redemption. Playing as more of a sequel to O than an album that stands alone in either style or effect, 9 seems to mimic the previous themes of infidelity, love triangles, and damaged relationships. While the latter tends to emphasize unrequited love, as in “Dogs” when Rice laments that “the day it ends and there’s no need for me”, in favor of the former’s emphasis on unfaithfulness, 9 can easily be dismissed as just another vantage point on the same story that is told in O. Although a superficial listen might cause one to think that due to relatively cheerful songs such as “Coconut Skins”, “Dogs”, or the verse to “Rootless Tree”, the album has a wholly other tone than his debut. Rice is still singing the same tired subject matter while excluding the passion of previous hits such as “The Blower’s Daughter”. It’s as if some of the grief has passed and although Rice is still superior to most singer/songwriters in his ability to communicate tragic emotion, 9 doesn’t sound committed.
In “Elephant” Damien writes the sequel to “The Blower’s Daughter” as he laments to his ex about a current relationship. And in “Sleep Don’t Weep” he has constructed “Cold Water” part two in both lyric and composition. Mutually, these tracks seem to embody liberation and forgiveness. Nevertheless, this gross restatement is an attenuation if not worse. One gets the feeling that 9 is nothing more than the follow-up to a critically acclaimed movie in which the first was extremely emotionally taxing and in no need of a sequel. It’s not that the sequel is bad, or even mediocre, but that it’s irrelevant due to the precision of the first. If understood as a sequel, 9 is either a new story of comparable heartbreak or the same story shown from a different perspective. Moreover, the unfortunate truth is that when such a sequel is released it has a tendency to cheapen the poignancy of the original.
There is still no denying Damien Rice’s talent with pained words, like in “9 Crimes” where he likens his love to a gun that is loaded, as if the bullets represent the employment of his love by another, and that he is unable “to hold it” if she doesn’t “shoot it”. The grittiness and palpability of the songs are best heard while listening with the lyrics in front of you for the reason that it helps to bring meaning to such aural tricks as one finds in “Me, My Yoke, & I” where the slide up the neck of the guitar appropriately imitates the motion of male self stimulation. Here one finds amidst the unclean a sense of suffering and isolation; an isolation that no doubt will be augmented by the departure of backup singer Lisa Hannigan as she pursues solo work. Damien Rice announced in March of 2007 that the relationship had “run its creative course” which raises the question whether a third album will reveal a venture away from the artistic vein of O and 9, or whether the loss of Hannigan will result in more sorrow to be released on album.
At length, the flow of 9 is dubious, as evidenced in “Coconut Skins” when the mood picks up suddenly halting the consistency of the first five tracks. Further confusing is Rice’s toying with electric guitars in “Grey Room”, which comes across as a half-hearted attempt not to replicate O. Yet from the strange Disney’s Fantasia orchestral climax of “The Animals Were Gone” to the beautiful candidness of “Accidental Babies”, and even the appropriately buoyant ambiance of the bittersweet quality of love triangles as presented in “Dogs”, 9 is still just so sad. We grieve through the songs with Rice and hope so deeply for relief and redemption that this is perhaps why the record sounds so tired and exhausted. Thus, after two bouts with the same temperament we begin to wonder if the sour just isn’t as sour without the sweet.
2.5 / 5 stars
- Jonathan Kroening
http://www.itsjustmusic.net
Highlights:
- “9 Crimes”
- “Elephant”
- “Accidental Babies”
