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I saw Damien Rice live in concert on 26 April 2007 at the Roseland Theater in Portland, Oregon. A friend had seen him live in Melbourne several months earlier and pronounced it to be the "best concert ever"! I thought that, since I would be in town and had loved his first album O, I'd go along with a friend and check out Damien Rice live in concert.

After waiting too long for food we walked into the theatre during the 2nd or 3rd song. Rice was roaring through a microphone that distorted his voice and the band was going full tilt. After a few minutes of this we decided that he was mad, yet strangely compelling. For the next song he switched into quiet mode and used a clean microphone. The contrast was absolutely stunning - one of the most amazing contrasts I've ever witnessed during a live concert. This was especially due to the quality of Rice's voice during the quiet moments. He used this "contrast device" continuously throughout the show to good effect but as the show went on it began to wear thin. That said, one of the finest "loud" moments was during the final pre-encore song when cellist Vyvienne Long suddenly walked away from her cello, to the piano that Rice had occasionally played, and added even more volume when it didn't seem possible.

Another oft-used effect was delay loops. Rice used almost endless delays to layer his vocals and guitar over themselves. This was almost always during the "loud" moments and it was difficult to tell whether Rice was controlling the delays or whether is was being done from the mixing desk. At the end of Amie he used the delay to build the phrase "I saw a spaceship" over itself until it became a rumbling cacophony, before he sat on the stage and the rumbling transformed into the sound of a spaceship that zipped up into the "sky". I'm not sure if any of it was synthesised... but it was incredibly well done. However, the best use of delay loops was during the first encore, when Long's cello was layered over itself producing wonderful chords, underneath an Irish rap on which she took lead vocals.

The show ended with Rice downing 3 or 4 glasses of red wine while telling a witty version of the story of how Cheers Darlin' came to be written. By the end of the song he staggered from the stage, waving to the audience. Done by someone else this might have looked like a cheap trick. However, in this case it fit perfectly with the emotion and intensity of the show. Damien Rice is clearly a talented, creative lunatic.

Was this the best concert I've ever been to? Sadly not. It was very good and Rice performed most of the excellent material from both of his albums. It was also one of the more compelling performances I've seen. However, Rice's screaming and the "loud" parts became repetitive by the end of the show. The contrast that began as an intense experience became formulaic. Damien Rice is brilliant but the show needed something else... and that something else was probably vocalist Lisa Hannigan, who Rice had recently, and unfortunately, ended his artistic partnership with. Hannigan had previously been such an integral part of Rice's music that hers is the first voice heard on his second album 9.

Given all of that, I think I'd like to see Damien Rice again in a year or two, especially if he partners with another talented female vocalist...