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- DAMIEN RICE O -

Singer/Songwriter Damien Rice strolled quietly onto the music scene back in 2003, with the hauntingly beautiful album 'O', and before too long he had made a big noise in the music industry. Irish born Rice had previously left the rock band Juniper to pursue a solo career. Juniper had already released two singles and was well on their way to putting out their first album with Polygram. But Damien was disenchanted with the label and left the band behind in 1999 in search of pastures new. Rice left the Emerald Isle and busked around Europe gathering musicians to fit in with his new direction in music, in the form of cellist Vyvienne Long, Tomo on drums, Shane Fitzsimmons on Bass, and remarkable singer Lisa Hannigan, with everything in place, he returned to his homeland to resume his career.

Damien Rice is basically an Irish folk singer with a troubadour style. I had first heard one of his tracks playing on the radio and I was totally enthralled at the music he was making. His Lyrics were pure and his melodies haunting, and I was swept away with the emotions his music evoked within me.-

Some singers have it; it's a lilt in their voice that can draw the emotions out, and on first listening to 'The Blowers Daughter' by Damien Rice, that is exactly what happened. The rawness of emotions that came through in his vocals was completely disarming, and provoked great empathy, and such is the effect that Damien Rice has upon me. Rice's debut album 'O' was two years in the making and it was virtually home produced from his bedroom in County Kildare, Ireland as Rice didn't like the commercial feel of most music that was being produced. He wanted honest, simplistic heartfelt emotion to be openly displayed without any artificial or polished sound to the music.

The album is a personal insight into the 'heart laid bare' emotions of a story of someone who falls in love, loses his lover, and becomes distraught by the loss of his one 'great love'. The album basically has one underlying story and each of the twelve songs is a piece to the whole part. The first six tracks tell of the wooing and falling in love, leading to the break up and coping with the loss, covered in the last six tracks. They are all chapters in the story, if you like; Rice's style is pure poet/storyteller as he opens his heart and mind and lets us eavesdrop on the love affair, and then the heartbreak contained in later tracks. Damien Rice was one of the standout artists of 2003. When 'O' was first

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