Damien Rice

Damien Rice is supposed to be one of those good old-fashioned singer songwriters, nothing more, nothing less.

To be honest I quite liked ‘Cannonball’, I genuinely thought it was a masterpiece and still enjoy listening to it. However, as I was making my way to Nottingham Ice Arena, I was finding it hard to justify why a musician such as Damien Rice had been given such a big venue to play. Lets be honest his biggest hit ‘Cannonball’ all those years ago is pretty much what has carried him through to today.



Once seated in the Ice Arena, it was easy to see that Mr Rice clearly isn’t able to sell out arenas, the promoters had draped a black curtain around the arena to make it look like he had packed it out, but in effect it was probably half full.

So we have a musician who has only really had one big hit, overcharging fans for a gig because it was at an arena. The whole thing was just a way of him to get richer by short changing his fans.

As soon as he arrived on stage it was easy to see that he was loving the attention, a few years ago when he played a local venue called Rock City, he requested that the bars remain shut whilst he was on stage so that the audience weren’t distracted from his performance. Tonight however he had obviously decided to make sure his band members didn’t get any attention as they were kept in low lighting throughout the evening.


So not to put to finer point on it, in short Damien Rice is an egotistical, depressing, moody, monotonous, repetitive, songwriter. It wouldn’t be so bad if he could actually sell lots of tickets, then I might possibly forgive him for believing that he is great. However acting like an egomaniac when you can barely fill an arena then questions need to be raised, Axl Rose can get away with it, he sells out stadiums, as for Damien Rice...well you get the point.

Apart from that, musically Damien is an incredible songwriter and his vocal ability will keep you glued to every word. He interjected the songs with stories that brought the music to life such as his explanation for writing such as ‘Cheers Darlin’ and admittedly when he’s playing and singing very few musicians could match his ability.

The setlist consisted of a good mixture of songs from the album ‘O’ and his newish album ‘9’. The downside is that they all sound very similar so although I genuinely enjoyed hearing them during the performance, after the show I was struggling to remember exactly which songs he had played.

In short then, did I enjoy the gig? Hell yeah, for acoustic guitar based type songs, I cant think of anyone more gifted and wonderful to listen to, but can I remember any of the songs (apart from ‘Cannonball’)? Sadly not!


Damien Rice is a hard act to review, firstly his egotistical attitude annoys me, but to give him credit he often makes a joke about it throughout his set, and at times is almost humble with it. The fact that he is extremely talented and an absolute pleasure to listen to live puts me in an awkward situation where I know that as much as I would love to dislike his live performance. I just cant!

At the end of all my ranting, the only thing I would want to be different is the venue, his music is definitely better suited to the small intimate venues.

FUTURE GIGS

sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.