Damien Rice
My Favourite Faded Fantasy

Review written four-handed, in collaboration with De...Marga...

[The opinion of De...Marga...]

November 3, 2006: “9” was published November 3, 2014: “My Favourite Faded Fantasy” is released
Eight years, eight interminable years I had to wait to find my beloved Damien on my path again; an album that aims to be a return, a quiet comeback after dark, difficult years for the Irish singer-songwriter. We need to take a long step back to understand why this period of forced withdrawal from the musical scene happened; it is March 2007 and Lisa Hannigan leaves her colleague, her loved one, her friend Damien. A musical partnership that has given wonderful tracks, deep, simple, essential, in the two albums that saw them collaborate; their vocal balance that was able to give, in listening, emotional sensations of dramatic intensity, but full of pathos to move, positively devastating the soul.Damien chooses to leave everything and everyone, in a kind of exile to find himself; he chooses Iceland, a very distant place where wild nature and peace help him compose the album, assisted by Rick Rubin, a respected producer for thirty years. A phrase from the singer-songwriter, which I read on these rainy autumn days, left me cold, hit me in full force with its intensity: “Sometimes you have to leave what you love, to try and love it again. I would give everything away, career, songs, fame to have Lisa back”. It is useless to dwell and try to make sense of these few, heartbreaking words. The album is emblematic from the cover: a drawing showing a high white wall, on top of which there are people and a long ladder leading to its summit. You see a man who has just begun to climb the wall, to reunite with those who have already done so; immediately I am reminded of the Berlin Wall and its fall twenty-five years ago, right on these days. Eight are the years passed since “9” and eight are also the tracks that make up the album; almost all have a substantial duration, two over eight minutes, as if Damien wanted to linger in the song with his Music for as long as possible, to find himself, to be reborn. It only took watching the single “I Don’t Want To Change You” for me to have the certainty of having rediscovered a friend in Music, a companion ready to give me those chills, those vivid emotions I have always and forever lived on. Damien appears on a lakeside pier, I believe Icelandic but it’s not very important; he is wet and cold, it’s raining. He seems aged and while singing struggles to keep his eyes on the camera...”Wherever you are you know I adore you, no matter how far apart we are...” He approaches the pier’s edge, falling into the water and then returning: water, the main element of our body, from where we are born. Finally, the singer-songwriter disappears, precisely in the liquid element, and on the horizon in the livid and gray sky appears a light, a brightness that seems to indicate a turnaround in his life: Damien is reborn, he is back.
Having finished the video, I turn off the computer and for a moment I see myself in the dark screen: I am also aging, the white in my beard is increasing every day. I take off my glasses, I need to dry the tears wetting my face...but I am absolutely happy also and especially for my friend Damien. Usually, I end my writings with the usual Latin phrase “Ad Maiora”. But today it seems appropriate to use another: “Omnia Munda Mundis”.

[The opinion of Ociredef86]
Damien Rice is back. Damien Rice is still with us. Fallen into despair and suffering, he has risen from his own ashes and returned to move us. Elegant, refined, and deep emotions unfold in the eight long tracks of his new album, the much-awaited "My Favourite Faded Fantasy". And it is precisely in the title-track that the Irish singer-songwriter from Kildare releases everything he kept to himself in the eight years of silence. Falsetto voice, gently plucked guitar. Everything seems to have stayed the same as in 2002, like that little gem that was "O", his debut. However, today there’s even more depth in the lyrics, more awareness of being a forty-year-old. Awareness also of his enormous capabilities as a musician. As the track progresses, it grows, becomes more and more intense surrounded by harmonious strings and our hearts as listeners fill with beauty, with disconsolate melancholy. Fingers brushing the piano mark the slow pace of the long "It Takes A Lot To Know A Man", and it is in these almost ten minutes that Damien Rice amazes us again. If in the first part the track seems like a normal pop-folk piece, in the final minutes everything transforms. It becomes an instrumental piece, ethereal and fascinating like the desolate Icelandic landscapes where Damien moved to restart his life and to conceive this new masterpiece. Ethereal and fascinating enough to sometimes recall the magical atmospheres of Sigur Ròs.
Land, ice, lead-colored sky, and wind that assaults our faces. These are the sensations the album emanates; these are the landscapes that inspired it. The cold Icelandic night, silent and unsettling, forms the backdrop to each track. It penetrates the skin and reaches the bone, leaving us totally bewildered. In the lead single "I Don't Want To Change You", Rick Rubin's production reaches incredible levels, but without overshadowing Damien. He remains the true protagonist. His crystalline voice sends shivers of bitter sweetness down the spine. The guitar brushes your cheeks like the warm and soft fingers of a smiling child. The strings surround you like the arms of your best friend. Applause and applause. The delicate eight minutes of "Trusty And True" are tinged with gospel, where the Irish singer-songwriter expresses all his distress over no longer having Lisa (Hannigan, also a singer) in his life. A painful loss, a sad and passionate letter to her who left, to her who is no longer part of his daily life. The emotion doesn’t stop for a moment, and the vibrant strings of the ever-present guitar touch us deeply, moving even the most unyielding of listeners. Closing is Damien’s whispered and transparent voice that leaves us stunned and tearless. "Long Long Way" is like a small crystal heart-shaped pendant, swinging slowly from our necks. It might shatter into a thousand pieces just by touching it with the hands, it might break like Damien’s voice. Instead, it holds, remains intact. Stays hanging at the neck just like the immense emotion that this final track gives remains for all its duration. Bravo Damien, you did it. You have suffered, cried, screamed, and destroyed knick-knacks but now you are still here, with us. You are with us and give us very strong, sincere, transparent emotions like the glacial waters of your new home, Iceland. Bravo Damien.


P.S.: I wholeheartedly thank my friend De...Marga...for wanting to collaborate with me on this long but hopefully pleasant writing.