Damien Rice

Part of Damien Rice's appeal is that his songs are so affecting, they hit you squarely in the gut. Rice's fervent, quavering delivery mingles with sparse instrumentation, allowing his stories to hang in your mind's eye, exposed like a raw nerve. O paints 10 visceral portraits using bold cinematic strokes.

Ostensibly from the singer-songwriter school, Damien Rice, who hails from Ireland, exhibits
few of that genre's confessional impulses and none of its folky earnestness. His acoustic
guitar deploys an arsenal of lush, dramatic effects, and his voice and lyrics draw inspiration
from such self-concealing obsessives as Thom Yorke, Elliott Smith and -- a now-ubiquitous
influence -- Jeff Buckley. On O, his debut album, Rice elongates his delicate mel... More >