Concert review: Damien Rice

The Irish have been accused of many things; punctuality isn't usually one of them. So even when I'd learned that no one was opening for Damien Rice at the Uptown on Sunday, I figured he'd take some liberties with the staring time (as he did, I was told, in St. Louis).

Wrong. He started his show at 7:30 p.m. sharp, before a lot of us were in the room or even in the building. I was lucky; I missed only the first song ("Rat Within the Grain"), unlike those who scurried in at 8 p.m. or later, looking a bit stricken and whispering, "What time did he start?"

This was my first Damien Rice show. I was advised before hand that my ignorance could be bliss: I wouldn't know how much  better his shows were when vocalist Lisa Hannigan was still with his band. Fair enough. You can't miss what you never knew. Without her, he still put on a dynamic live show. It wasn't especially long -- 100 minutes -- but it was loaded with grand (sometimes melodramatic) moments.

Rice writes tragic-romantic folk songs and blows them up into epic moments. Live, his style is reminiscent of Jeff Buckley and Ryan Adams: lots of cathartic and dramatic expressions of sound and sentiment. He can write (and overwrite) lyrics that pack some emotional wallop (he's got some Leonard Cohen in him).

Musically -- as in, melodically -- however, he tends to be rather predictable, at times pedestrian.  Thus, he relies on sound affects, especially vocal distortions, to spice up his presentations. It's a gimmick that gets a bit tiresome the third or fourth time around. He also likes to play with dynamics, slowly generating swells of sound that turn into gales and then hurricanes of noise. For such a small ensemble (guitar, bass, drum, cello), his band can generate a huge sound -- almost Crazy Horse large.

The near sell-out crowd this evening was with him nearly every step of the way, even during the bloated 15 minute jam at the end of "I Remember." In fact, by doing nothing, the crowd helped deliver some of the more memorable moments of this show. During "Cannonball," which Rice sang on acoustic guitar, away from the microphone -- unmic-ed? -- 1,800 people turned stone-cold still and silent so everyone could hear every lyric and each lightly strummed guitar chord.

Other highlights: "The Blower's Daughter"; the solo/piano cover of Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" by cellist Vyvienne Long; "The Professor" and "La Fille Danse," in which Rice showed off his French fluency; and the closer, "Cheers Darlin'."

For that one, he was alone on stage, except for a waiter who kept filling Rice's wine glass and re-lighting his cigarette. To canned music, he toasted the lover who left him for another, acting drunker and more bitter with every downed glass of wine: "Here's to your lover man .. I'll just hang around and eat from a can."

It was a campy bit of satire and an odd but fitting way to end a show: half-pissed and immersed in a fit of theater and sarcasm, a few thing the Irish are famous for.

Setlist: Rat Within the Grain, 9 Crimes, Volcano, Coconut Skins, Woman Like a Man, The Animals Were Gone, Grey Room, Me My Yoke and I, Rootless Tree, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (Flaming Lips), The Professor & La Fille Danse; The Blower's Daughter, I Remember (jam), Cannonball. Encore: Accidental Babies, Cheers Darlin'

| Timothy Finn, The Star

Comments

[Florn Roonst]

Not so fast, Mr. Know-It-All.

I've often accused the Irish of punctuality. And I'm not alone.