“Let’s not talk about love.” 

Damien Rice somberly says to his audience of thousands at Union Hall in Bangkok on 6 June, a regular Tuesday evening in a quieter but still vibrant side of town. He’d just opened the show, his first back here in seven years, with the tender melancholy of ‘Older Chests’, without a word, before he greets the crowd with a familiarity that is immediately comforting. 

Few people wouldn’t know who he is or at least be familiar with his music. Rice’s debut album O, released in 2002, sold over a million copies and gained much critical acclaim. Its lead single and his most famous hit, ‘The Blower’s Daughter’, most notably provided the theme song to the 2004 award-winning romance drama movie, Closer, and had earned him the world’s admiration early on, while later hits like ‘Cannonball’, ‘9 Crimes’, and ‘Volcano’ brought him a devoted fanbase that would hold onto his music till today. 

“The good thing about being a singer-songwriter is that whenever something goes wrong in your life, you can pick up the guitar or piano, or pick up the pen and paper, and you can write it out of you. It’s kind of like going to the toilet, you know, just getting rid of the things that you don’t need,” Rice goes on to say matter-of-factly. “But if you bought tickets for tonight, you obviously still have issues that you need to resolve.” 

This earns a burst of laughter from the audience, effectively breaking the ice and setting the tone for the rest of the evening. 

Some things in life may change, and some things stay the same

His heart-wrenching songs and the memories they carry were precisely why many made their way to the show that night, and those who did get exactly what they expected, but also something a bit more unexpected of the typically taciturn singer-songwriter. For every performance, Rice interspersed his songs with stories about what inspired him to write them: Staring at the stars as you lay alone in your friend’s bed recalling the embarrassment of assuming she’d been coming on to you (‘Amie’); saying “screw that” – he uses a more vulgar term – to the pressures other people put on you (‘Coconut Skins’); what happens when you don’t screw that (‘Insane’). 

It wasn’t a very long show, just a little over an hour of fan favourites and a handful of others, but Rice’s masterful guitar skills, powerful vocals, and hauntingly evocative lyrics, combined with stage lighting that enhanced the emotional tone of each song, created such a strong flavour of intimacy that you can’t easily get anywhere else. With the focus primarily being on Rice himself, and the singular accompaniment of singer and cellist Francisca Barreto who was herself a revelation, the production allowed the music and storytelling to take centerstage throughout the night without unnecessary distractions.

Rice jokes around very candidly, even poking light fun at people in the audience (“Some of you are either really late or have very small bladders”), his dry humour lightening the mood and making the show feel more like an intimate gathering of friends to welcome back an old mate who had been off elsewhere for some time. Sitting on the floor, he talks about not making a set list and just letting the night flow from one moment to the other. “This song is kind of a similar theme,” he says of ‘Behind Those Eyes’. “It’s a conversation with a friend, or maybe a hypothetical lover, a partner in life. Maybe in a way, it’s a conversation with yourself – who would you be without the baggage you’re carrying?”  

Afterwards, he asks everyone in the seated venue to stand up and come closer to the stage, and it feels all that’s left right then is to be hanging around a few sets of tables, maybe some bar stools, as the crowd sings along with their full might to ‘Volcano’, and later on ‘The Blower’s Daughter’ which finishes the night.

As he thanks the crew and promoters Viji Corp, Rice naturally expresses his gratitude to the audience as well. “You’re the reason we get to call our jobs in music a job,” he says, emphasising how it’s because people still remember who he is that he gets to keep doing this. He had no new album to promote during this tour, but just the same, people had flocked to share this moment with him. And while many of us have changed and grown and are now at very different points in our livedamian ricedamian rices from what we used to be when we’d first listened to Damien Rice those many, many years ago, the music that captivated us then remains a timeless thread that binds us and would keep us gathering to recall.   

Damien Rice Live in Bangkok 2023 setlist:

'Older Chests'

'Amie'

'cannonball'

'My Favourite Faded Fantasy'

'Astronaut'

'9 Crimes'

'Coconut Skins'

'Insane'

'Behind Those Eyes'

'I Remember'

'Cold Water'

'The Blower’s Daughter'