Damien Rice – My Favourite Faded Fantasy (2014)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 50:31 minutes | 935 MB | Genre: Folk, Singer-Songwriter
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Atlantic Records UK
My Favourite Faded Fantasy is Damien Rice’s first collection of material in eight years and was produced by Rick Rubin and Rice himself. It is a selection of songs, which Rice says are “sung straight into the metaphorical mirror.” Intimate, frank and revitalized by making music again, My Favourite Faded Fantasy is a record that accepts one’s faults but also begins, perhaps, to appreciate one’s ability to grow up. The recording process began in Los Angeles and finished up with a cast of friends and local musicians against the stunning backdrop of Reykjavik, Iceland.
Damien Rice doesn’t do anything in a hurry. He lets his songs unfold at a deliberate, almost stately pace and he’s similarly unconcerned about rushing through his career, taking a full eight years to deliver 2014’s My Favourite Faded Fantasy, which amounts to only his third record in 12 years. Other artists who have experienced a similarly long gestation period return with long, overblown works, but not Rice. He teamed with Rick Rubin, the Zen master of acoustic basics, to shape an exquisitely textured collection of eight songs that runs just a hair over 50 minutes (a simultaneously released deluxe edition contains just one bonus cut). Rice doesn’t greatly expand his aesthetic — he’s still equal parts Jeff Buckley and Thom Yorke, cut with the sullen singer/songwriter sophistication of Nick Drake — but refinement is Rice’s signature. He whittles away the excess in his words and melody, then dresses the detailed sculpture in finely tailored accouterments of slightly sighing strings, strummed guitars, and a hint of forward momentum lying within buried rhythms. This means My Favourite Faded Fantasy may come on as a bit underwhelming at first but that’s the intent: it’s not designed to grab, it’s designed to soothe and then slowly worm its way into the subconscious, which is where these eight songs reveal themselves to be as strong as anything else Rice has written.
Tracklist:
01. Damien Rice – My Favourite Faded Fantasy (06:11)
02. Damien Rice – It Takes A Lot To Know A Man (09:33)
03. Damien Rice – The Greatest Bastard (05:04)
04. Damien Rice – I Don’t Want To Change You (05:26)
05. Damien Rice – Colour Me In (05:18)
06. Damien Rice – The Box (04:27)
07. Damien Rice – Trusty And True (08:09)
08. Damien Rice – Long Long Way (06:21)
