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Damien Rice @ Prince of Wales 2004 

Now THAT was a fucking great gig! When you think you’ve seen a band perform absolutely brilliantly you only have to see Ireland’s Damien Rice perform solo to realise that a talented musician with a few pedals and a guitar can do anything a band can, times 10! Although I’m not 100% sure, this was his first time in Australia and just when I thought nobody had ever heard of him over here, the show had sold out, full of fans, young and old, male and female. Sans Lisa Hannigan, Rice performed to the eager crowd at one of the last shows of his international tour.

The most amazing thing about the performance was that it went for over 2 hours yet it felt like 10 mins. He performed all of his hits from O (excluding my favourite ‘Amie’ dammit!) and a few of his b-sides. He dipped into some covers including Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ and David Gray’s ‘Babylon’. Actually they were more like extensions of his own tracks as Rice seemed to go off on tangents more than twice.

The crowd were left stunned when he used the pedals to great effect, recording his guitar rhythms, leads, and voice, mixing them live to construct basically a full band. As much as the album is pretty laid back, he surprised the audience with some full-on rock songs that proved his versatility. A seasoned musician and former busker, Rice had no trouble changing from singing with everything he had to reaching octaves that most performers can only dream about. A lot of the time, you’ll go see a performer live only to hear them sound average compared to the album. Rice shows his live experience by exceeding the album performances with a number of tracks going on for over 7 minutes. And everybody in the room felt the energy and passion for music when he performed. A number of people around me were in another world when he sang and to be able to convey that to so many people, on your own, shows the ability of a great musician.

He made comment that Melbourne was the best city he had visited during his Australian tour, with the crowd completely agreeing, obviously going totally nuts. You hear that from every musician but it felt genuine here. The highlight of the night was his drunken rendition of ‘Cheers Darlin’ where he opened a bottle of red, lit a cigarette and sung like a drunk guy down on his luck, wishing he had made more of an impression on that girl at the bar (tell me you haven’t been there before?!).

He’s just released his b-sides EP and is slowly working on his follow-up to O. All good things come for those who wait.

Definitely up there as the gig of 2004. Cheers!

Links:

- The best fansite I’ve found.
- Another great fansite.

P.S - Anybody wanting 30-second video clips of the performance, e-mail me.