Venue: The Star Theatre @ The Star Performing Arts Centre, Singapore
Date: 3rd June 2023
Promoter: Lushington Entertainments
Review by: Jason Lim
Special Thanks: The Lushington Entertainments team
Photos by Lee JW
“Some things in life may change, but some things they stay the same”- Older Chests
After confirming the online payment for tickets to this concert, I couldn’t help asking myself if it was too much of an indulgence paying to fly over to Singapore and watch Damien Rice again for the 3rd time.
I first experienced Damien Rice live in the Palladium London in 2005 when I was in my twenties, then watched him in Singapore in 2016 as a newly married thirty-something. Catching him this time around as a forty-year old with a kid in tow, I wondered if I might find that I’ve outgrown his music or perhaps even attending concerts in general.
On his part, Damien who turns 50 this year, has also not released a new full-length album since 2014 (except for the odd new single release now and then) and seems content sailing around the world these days.
Yet, as the lights dimmed in the Star Theatre that Saturday evening, for about 2 hours, all doubts and the passing of time seemed to fade away into the quiet reverb of an old friend’s familiar voice and music.
The evening kicked off with Damien’s latest collaborator, Francisca Barreto filling the theatre with a warm cello intro to his new haunting single, “Astronaut”. Having heard it only on Spotify previously, the track always felt like one of his weaker singles but hearing him play it live for the first time elevated the song entirely and reminded me of how much more intense and raw Damien Rice is live on stage.
He followed this up with “Older Chests” and “Coconut Skins” which he shared was about recognising that we are all going to die soon and we should just live a little bit and be ourselves instead of a pretended version of ourself.
Harking back to his busking days, Damien also took jibes at the audience, serenading ad-libs to some of them who arrived late or seemed to be coughing a little too much (“do we still have Covid?” he asked).
Mixing up songs from his three albums, he played “Volcano”, “My Favourite Faded Fantasy”, “Accidental Babies”, “Cannonball”, “Eskimo” and “9 Crimes”. Whilst notably lacking his live loop pedal effects, each performance was rich and exquisite in its rendition. Especially so for the tracks with backing vocals from multi-tasking cellist Francisca who is Brazilian but completely nailed down the parts previously sung by Lisa Hannigan with tinges of Irish and Icelandic accents.
The audience lapped it up and were generally quite restrained in the beginning, even when asked to request songs (since Damien confessed that they don’t make setlists for each performance) these were voiced in a polite manner and volume. When invited to participate in a signature three-part singalong for Volcano, the audience dutifully complied but lacked enthusiasm seen in his other performances.
It was only towards the end of the show, when Damien told everyone to just forget about remaining seated and allowed them to get as close as they could to the stage that the mood changed entirely. Charging ahead and standing in the aisles through the encore performances of “I Remember”, “Trusty and True” and the “Blower’s Daughter” as the finale – the audience singalongs truly intensified to its rightful level. There was even a proposal in the audience midway through the last song which drew a pocket of applause from those near enough to see what was going on.
I came across this note I wrote seven years ago when I last saw Damien Rice in concert, and every word still holds true even this time around:
For one evening, it was nice to experience what felt like a long overdue catch up with an old friend, someone who’s gone and done crazy things, been labelled a bastard, connoisseur of great excuse and walked away from volcanos and conventional stardom. I’ve been concerned for his sanity and skill – but relieved to be firmly reminded that the great artists suffer and come out all the better from everything they’ve put themselves through. A favourite fantasy nowhere near faded.
All in, watching Damien Rice live again nearly twenty years later still resonates with the same parts of my soul that has never really changed despite time and life situations moving on.