It’s been over four years since I last saw Damien Rice perform, back in 2014 when he performed an underplay at The Box ahead of the release of his third album, My Favourite Faded Fantasy. This also happened to be my first time seeing Rice perform, so it’s safe to say that I was spoiled by the intimacy of this performance. But I knew that I had to catch him the next time that he returned to play for us here in New York.
While we are still waiting for new music, I was eager to see that Rice would return to New York for not one, but two performances at Town Hall on the night of Friday, January 25th. I caught the matinee show at 4 p.m. which interestingly also came with a bit of a Q&A opportunity for fans with Rice.
Both the early and late shows were pretty instant sellouts, making it perfectly clear that Rice still demands quite an affectionate fanbase even four years removed from when he last released new music. This became totally evident early in the show with fans taking the upcoming Q&A prospects to mean that they could just shout whatever they wanted from their seats or come and go as they please. Granted, this was an early show and people understandably may have been arriving late coming from work, but even Rice had a bit of fun with the latecomers, joking after a batch of them came in after kicking off the show with “Trusty and True,” telling them he had only one song left.
The show ran for about 90 minutes and features a mix of some fan favorites, crowd requests, and covers. He spoke about some new music and projects that are on the horizon and ran through some stories about songs such as beloved classics like “Delicate” and “Elephant.” Sadly, we didn’t get all the expected hits or even as many songs as one would expect. On one hand the Q&A did provide Rice to give some interesting insight into his songs and his songwriting process but the interactions with fans turned into an open season invitation, one that the crowd never quite curved into a respectful manner, eventually just turning into everyone shouting for their favorite songs, which got to the point where Rice somewhat jokingly told the crowd that any requests wouldn’t be played. And honestly, I couldn’t even blame him.
When Rice was allowed to showcase his songwriting talent and put on the musical portion of the show, it was breathtaking and every bit as magical as you’d come to expect. Just as one man, Rice is able to summon so much power and emotion, so much so that a rather talkative woman behind me was finally silenced to just tears during his performance of “Delicate.” And one benefit of a fan question about influences resulted in covers of two artists he cited as inspiration, not influence, with Prince’s “When Doves Cry” and Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat,” closing out the show sans encore.
Hopefully, next time Rice is back in town, it’s with a new record and hopefully a more respectful audience.
Find a full setlist of photos from the matinee show posted below.
Damien Rice setlist:
1. Trusty and True
2. Delicate
3. Astronaut
4. 100 Miles Across The Room
5. Rootless Tree
6. Stone
7. The Professor & La Fille Danse
8. Elephant
9. The Greatest Bastard
10. When Doves Cry (Prince cover)
11. Famous Blue Raincoat (Leonard Cohen cover)
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