Damien Rice - Live From Union Chapel

Damien Rice has always had a habit of dividing the masses when it comes to his music. On the one hand there are those who find his melodramatic yet ambiguous wailings about how awful a person he is over a backing of acousticy folk formulaic and tiresome, but then there are also those (those who I personally like to refer to as “winners”) who think his eerie timbres and melancholic lyrics are just a bit beautiful.

No prizes for guessing which category your humble reviewer falls under. If you too are a winner, the chances are you’ll love this album - after all, it is a conglomerate of the best bits of ‘O’ delivered personally with far less production and a few exclusive tracks that can’t be found on any of Rice’s other releases. There are some notable developments to some of the live versions too - opener ‘Delicate’ is made even more haunting by the addition of some operatic thirds by Lisa Hannigan in the last chorus, whilst the boiling down of the accompaniment to ‘Amie’ makes for a wonderfully intimate sound. Not all the changes are for the better though; the addition of a cello accompaniment to Hannigan’s ‘Silent Night’ adds a harmonic resolution that only seems to serve to take away the jarring, creepy quality of the acapella original.

The new tracks are worth a listen too; ‘Then Go’ is as folky as it gets with lyrics such as ‘I get the feeling you’re bored of me’ and ‘did your mother have it easily?’, and ‘Baby Sister’ is largely more of the same genre wise, if varying somewhat on content: a depressing commentary of family abuse. Arguably the strongest new track is ‘Be My Husband’ - a bluesy offering from Lisa Hannigan with African inspired drumming that’s impressive in terms of originality and being a refreshing change of pace and genre.

If you can’t stand Damien Rice, then this probably isn’t going to be the turnaround album that changes your mind, but if you’re a fan, then ‘Live from the Union Chapel’ is highly unlikely to disappoint.

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