O (Record #75)

O
Damien Rice
Vector, 2002

This is another of those records, like Maroon, that I am embarrassed and shocked to find on my list. After all, that pretentious Canadian snob Nick Perreault joyously told me that Damien Rice creates the “safest music ever.” Fair enough. “Artistic” indie girls the world over love O and swoon as they dream of rescuing Rice from his heartbreak. Fair enough. But for whatever reason, for a few months in 2004, O meant the world to me.

2004 was a weird year for me. Between two life-defining terrible relationships, I had a brief interlude in which I was single and uninterested but surrounded by new friends and still undiagnosed bipolar. I had a complete emotion breakdown one night in early February, prompted by God knows what. But a few weeks later, I made the 45-minute drive to the nearest record store and bought O.

And O is a record on the cusp of complete emotional breakdown. Rice sings every syllable as though he’s about to crack, fragile and wavering. I didn’t have a girl to attach most of these songs to at first, but the feeling was right. I remember driving back from Atlanta, alone on Valentine’s Day, and listening to “Cheers Darlin’,” a halfhearted anthem to bitterness that managed to work for me anyway.

I eventually found a girl to attach them to, and I remember that in the early stages of that relationship I went fly-fishing with my friend Garrett. As we stood by the 40-degree river in pre-dawn, I tried not to tell him the story but kept hearing lines from O in my head:

And so it is the colder water
The blower’s daughter
The pupil in denial
I can’t take my eyes off of you

And especially “Cannonball”:

It’s not hard to fall
And I don’t want to scare her
It’s not hard to fall
And I don’t want to lose

I did--I told Garrett, and I lost the girl, five or six times, actually--and if I didn’t think much about O after my 18-hour move to Omaha (the last time I remember listening to this record in earnest), it still makes me shiver in the 6 a.m. chill.

Say what you will about Damien Rice—and I’ve said plenty, starting with the overindulgence of two (terrible) hidden bonus tracks and ending with that aggravating dramatic gasp he does almost constantly—the man knows how to record. I remember hearing that he recorded O in his bedroom, but you’d never guess it. The acoustic guitar sounds crisp and full, and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a percussion sound I liked better. He soaks the record in strings--mostly just cello, but he slathers the full 1940s film score orchestra onto “Amie”--and while I’m usually not a fan of that sound, it really works here.

Then there’s the duets. Rice is accompanied on nearly every song by the vocals of one Lisa Hannigan, about whom I know nothing and who, I am told, no longer plays with him. A pity. Her vocals bring his back down to earth--they’re soft but not weepy, strong but not intrusive. Also, twist of fate: That girl I thought about down by the river was named Lisa. Not a pity.

I think, for a certain segment of the population—and I am not sure if I am part of this group or not--Rice is the indie-rock equivalent of Roy Orbison. He lacks Orbison’s glorious range, but he produces those same mini-symphonies of teenage loss and heartbreak. These days, I couldn’t care less what he’s doing, and I’ll probably never buy or listen to another of his records, but for that stretch of time, I needed to hear someone more banged-up than me—even if it was mostly for dramatic effect.

O SONG-BY-SONG
Delicate ****
Volcano ****
The Blower’s Daughter ****
Cannonball *****
Older Chests ****
Amie ****
Cheers Darlin’ ****
Cold Water ****
I Remember ****
Eskimo **
Prague **
Silent Night **

Still Feel Gone (Record #76)

This series is a continuation/"simulcast" of a series I do on Facebook about my mathematically determined Top 100 Records.

STILL FEEL GONE
Uncle Tupelo
Rock Pile, 1991

No Depression is the watershed Uncle Tupelo record, but that’s because of what it represents, not what it is. That record slams out of the gate with some fantastic songs—“Graveyard Shift,” “That Year,” “Before I Break”--but its second half is as weak as you’d expect from a record made by 19-year-olds. Do you ever listen to “John Hardy” or “So-Called Friend”? I don’t.

That’s not to say that Still Feel Gone is consistent, although its lows aren’t quite as low as No Depression’s. Jeff Tweedy’s songs remain sub-par for the most part, with the exception of the opening “Gun,” a Replacements-style barn-burner that’s the first perfect song Tweedy ever wrote. But “Watch Me Fall” shuffles its way nowhere, and “If That’s Alright” dies on the runway. “Nothing” fares a little better, although it’s attitude rather than skill that makes it worthwhile.

No, this is still Jay Farrar’s show, and Farrar’s big revelation is that he could write beer-weepers like “Still Be Around” just as well as he could write punk-screechers like “Postcard”--maybe even better. “Still Be Around” is a classic, a distillation of everything Farrar does right. He’s always had one of the best voices in both rock and country music, aged well before its time by cigarettes and whiskey, and hitting all the wrong notes in all the right places. This song beats the hell out of anything on No Depression, tossing out references to “Whiskey Bottle” just so we know he knows this is better.

The twin cousin to “Still Be Around” is “True to Life,” in which Farrar updates and reifies “Factory Belt” as a late-‘70s Springsteen anthem. It starts off slow. “I can only sing it loud. I always try to sing it clear,” he says, and then the other shoe falls with the beat: “What the hell are we all doing here?” It’s really a continuation of No Depression’s “Factory Belt,” with the angry guitars replaced by resignation and harmonica.

The band was still living in Belleville, Illinois, at this time, that remnant of the Rust Belt filled with dying car and beer factories, and Farrar’s dissatisfaction with the town bleeds through every note he sings. The one-two explosion of “Punch Drunk” and “Postcard” provide a slice of life in future ghost towns. “Everybody’s just spending his time just building and making / Someday, someone will say, ‘For what?’” he rages in the former--Farrar would never write another song this violent--before following it up in the latter with, “Nothing here to stand on.”

Even the song titles reflect the pain he feels for the broken-down blue-collars around him. There’s “Looking for a Way Out” (“You spent your whole life in this county / Never been out of state”), and there’s “Discarded” (“So goddamned hard to make it work / No easy way out of this one”). Farrar was working in his parents’ used bookstore at the time, and so he probably didn’t have first-hand experience in the beer factory, but he’s genuine and believable when he sings about this stuff.

Uncle Tupelo wouldn’t be in Belleville much longer--they’d move to St. Louis sometime between March 16-20, 1992 and Anodyne--and coincidentally or not, their music calmed down when they left. Something about the town itself seems to have turned them into the Minutemen, and while Still Feel Gone has its country elements, they’re less present than on No Depression, and certainly less so than on their next two records. Protest songs are easier when your guitars turn into razorblades, I suppose.

And so it is that Still Feel Gone is without a doubt the band’s most conventionally angry record--when it’s not out-and-out raging at George H.W. Bush and trickle-down economics, it’s in despair, the other side of anger. Uncle Tupelo (and for that matter, Son Volt and Wilco) would make better records, but never one this righteously indignant, this fed-up.

STILL FEEL GONE SONG-BY-SONG
Gun *****
Looking for a Way Out ****
Fall Down Easy ****
Nothing ****
Still Be Around *****
Watch Me Fall ***
Punch Drunk ****
Postcard ****
D. Boon ***
True to Life *****
Cold Shoulder ***
Discarded ****
If That’s Alright ***