10 Iconic Damien Rice Songs We're Hoping To Hear On His Australian Tour

“Warm and inviting”. “Homely”. “A great lost hope”. “A man of prodigious talent.” These are all glowing accolades given to beloved Irish folk singer-songwriter Damien Rice – and that's just from one review The Music did the last time he was in Australia.

Expand this overwhelming praise over the course of a 20-plus year career and across publications and fans around the globe, and only then will you come close to understanding the impact this County Kildare native has made across his award-winning run as a solo troubadour.

Next January and February, he'll return for a run across some of Australia's most beautiful theatres – including the Palais in Melbourne and the State in Sydney. To not break the ambience of these striking performances, where you could often hear a pin-drop while Rice performs, here is a selection of his finest musical moments that would be very much appreciated live and in concert.

9 Crimes

Given this list is in alphabetical order, we head first to a number that has been very, very kind to Rice over the years. 9 Crimes, the quasi-title track and opening number of his second album 9, has long stood as one of his most beloved compositions – and it's easy to see why.

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Like much of his best work, 9 Crimes thrives on the contrast of its beautiful musical landscape with its intentionally ugly lyricism. The shame that hangs in the air with each word is kept up there by means of its lilting, reverberating piano and quivering cello. Its solitude in Rice's solo performances is accentuated by the ghost of his past, too, with one-time duet partner and collaborator Lisa Hannigan long gone. 9 Crimes is a slow dance with inner demons that waltzes on almost two decades later.

Anything by Leonard Cohen

Damien Rice has never been a stranger to covers, tackling everything from songs by his former band Juniper to knocking Nothing Compares 2 U out of the park immediately upon finding out Sinead O'Connor had passed.

It's clear, however, that Rice may not have so much as picked up a guitar in his youth were it not for his hero: The late, great Leonard Cohen.

The beloved songwriter's signature tune Hallelujah has been covered by thousands, but Rice's rendition is one of the few still going (apart from k.d. lang's) that truly seems to understand the song's power. He has also performed remarkable versions of Cohen songs such as Famous Blue Raincoat and So Long, Marianne – the latter as recently as April this year. As much as Rice's originals will be savoured, so too would a small moment for Leonard.

The Blower's Daughter

No hope necessary on this one. One of Rice's solo shows is highly unlikely to go down without both this and fellow O staple Volcano appearing on it. To compare, it would be like if Leonard Cohen didn't play Hallelujah, really. So why is it on this list? The simple reason is that it's born anew every time it's performed.

For someone in the audience, from the front row to the back of the mezzanine, it's a song that signifies something tangible and powerful. It soundtracked a pivotal moment in their life. It carried through the seasons, through birth and death and rebirth. If you're a Damien Rice fan of any vintage, you have a Blower's Daughter story – and that will flash before your eyes when it's inevitably played, making it a unique experience for every show he performs.

Cannonball

Another masterclass of Rice's abilities as both a singer and a songwriter, Cannonball is another inevitability when it comes to his shows. It's never met with a groan or a sigh of “Oh no, not this again”, however. Not when it simultaneously holds such weight and such fragility within it – to the point that it, too, is living a thousand lives as it's performed.

It's worth considering the scale here, the ratio of what Rice has been up against as a performer since this song was released. Think of the thousands of people Rice has stunned into silence all by himself. His lilting voice matched with his emotive, evocative words and his spellbinding acoustic guitar playing. A packed auditorium is simply no match. No matter how long it's been since you heard it, Cannonball will make you float again.

Colour Me In

For how long Rice has been in the game, it can be easy to forget he's only three studio albums deep. As such, Colour Me In is one of the most recent additions to his catalogue despite being a decade old at this point.

The literal centrepiece of My Favourite Faded Fantasy is notable for its swelling orchestral arrangement, which bubbles under in the song's second half before it leads to an awe-inspiring crescendo. Will he eventually become the folk version of The Avalanches if he continues to hold off on album four? Who's to say? All we know is that songs like Colour Me In prove that he could still sit down tomorrow and write something that could bring you to tears if he wanted to. He's like a trained sniper at this stage. A hitman of the heart.

Delicate

A Damien Rice show can change night by night, depending on what he feels like playing and what an audience member might rustle up the courage to ask for (more on that in a second). If his more recent setlists are anything to go by, however, it's generally a coin flip if you'll get Delicate as your show opener – as it's one of two he tends to alternate between (more on the other one in a second).

It's as strong a start as any, setting the scene for a night that won't shy away from raw-nerve emotion and the starkness of spaces that exist in between the silence of songs. Delicate is true to its title, teetering on the cracks of a foundation built on whispers and secrecy. A shining example of a “fuck, I wish I wrote that” song.

Elephant

It's time to address the Elephant in the room – or, crucially, the lack thereof. As the aforementioned review testified, Rice doesn't always pull out this track from his second album when playing live. Thanks to a particularly pleading Melbourne punter, however, he resurrected it from the archives. “He absolutely knocked it out of the park,” wrote The Music's Christopher Lewis of the performance. “It was the highlight of the night. Metaphorical jaws were on the floor of Hamer Hall.”

Rice resurrected the song again back in March for a performance in Japan, notably utilising his audience's silence to play it completely away from the microphone. Will Australian audiences listen, given how low gig etiquette is these days? We can only hope, as this deeper cut is one of Rice's boldest and most resplendent – no mean feat given its competition.

The Greatest Bastard

It's been five years since Rice pulled this song out and dusted off its cobwebs – indeed, the Setlist FM database says it was last seen trekking through Nepal circa 2019. There, Rice performed it in Kathmandu of all places. Isn't it time it came home? The Greatest Bastard is another instance of My Favourite Faded Fantasy implementing a rush of strings to really bring the song some gravitas, but it's worth noting the song holds just as much resonance when it's performed in its skeletal form by Rice on his lonesome.

This tour is already destined to be quite magical given the kind of rooms Rice will be performing in, but if Rice is able to pluck out some rough diamonds amongst his catalogue as a special treat for Australian fans, it's certain to sweeten the deal significantly.

The Professor & la Fille Danse

Originally released as a B-side to The Blower's Daughter – which, amazingly, was his debut single – here we have Rice beginning to find his voice as a solo artist. The Professor is an unfiltered and occasionally filthy depiction of a bizarre love triangle. He hasn't quite figured out the more articulate nature of his musings on things between people at this point in his songwriting journey, and it borrows so many of Leonard Cohen's tricks that he may as well have a writing credit. Either despite or because of its imperfections, this rough diamond has been an unlikely but endearing live favourite right up to today. Put it this way: Rice might be one of the only people to mention dicks and pricks on stage at the Sydney Opera House this side of My Dad Wrote A Porno.

Rootless Tree

For all his success, Rice has never really had a “hit”, per se. His sole dalliance with the Irish Top 10 chart was via a charity single, Unplayed Piano, two decades ago – and he's barely played it since. Around 2006, however, Rice found himself in decent triple j rotation thanks to the seething, acidic Rootless Tree.

Was it getting requested almost entirely for its refrain of “Fuck you/Fuck you”? It's entirely possible: Another folk artist, Martha Wainwright, had a triple j hit the year before with her similarly-filthy Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole. Even so, there's a good chance that this may have been someone's first introduction to Damien Rice. Perhaps even someone who's writing these words now. There's no way to rightly know. Regardless, the normally silent Rice crowd deserves to let out a “fuck you” or two. Indulge us, Damien.