Black moods and Rice.

9

* Damien Rice * Warner Bros.

Many singer-songwriters sound so damn whiny and anemic, you just want to cram roast beef sandwiches down their gullets. But acclaimed Irish troubadour Damien Rice does not want for more iron in his bloodstream--or fire in the belly--on his sophomore outing. Even when he sings sotto voce with just acoustic guitar for accompaniment, intensity tinges his performance. On the opener, "9 Crimes," Rice and co-vocalist Lisa Hannigan take the seemingly innocuous phrase "Is that alright" and toss it back and forth like a live hand grenade. But what makes 9 especially compelling is its juxtaposition of soft and loud. When Rice explodes, barking "fuck you" over a threnody of dissonant strings ("Rootless Tree"), well, you're definitely not in James Blunt territory. This disc quivers with almost as many raw nerve endings as Hole's Live Through This. To heighten the tension of the 10 originals, Rice also intersperses full-throated vocal passages with flashes of piercing falsetto voice. Wisely, lyrical flashes of bittersweet levity, like the offhanded way he mutters "I love your depression / And your double chin" on q-he Animals Were Gone," are seeded throughout the emotional maelstrom. Rice is definitely a sensitive fellow. But a wimp? Hell, no.