Review: Damien Rice

***

"This song is from a good bit back," says Damien Rice, apparently forgetting that, at this point, all of his songs are from "a good bit back". It has been eight years since the Celbridge-born, Los Angeles-based man has released an album of new material, and he jokes that he has been ensconced in the studio for "about 70 years" working on the follow-up to 2006's 9.

Tonight, he has been coaxed out of semi-retirement to celebrate the ongoing 25th birthday festivities of Whelan's, the scene of many of his early gigs. The bar is closed, candles are lit, the lighting is moody and the years melt away as the now 40-year-old Rice gently breaks the ice with Delicate, one of several tracks drawn from O, that era-defining, world-beating debut.

For the most part it's just him, an acoustic guitar and an effect pedal that ramps up the volume and adds squally nuance to songs such as Woman Like a Man and Amie. The addition of a friend beating time on a lone bass drum is distracting on some songs, and as unnecessary as some of Rice's rambling between-song tangents (one wittering about sperm is particularly awkward).

The passing years have not seen Rice lose his tendency to drift into self-indulgence, but when he strips away the balderdash and simply sings, he is on glorious form. The Professor and Rootless Tree are both beautifully effective; Cannonball soars without the X Factor-esque excess and I Remember sounds as fresh as it did 12 years ago. There is new material, too. The Box builds slowly to an angrily strummed climax, The Greatest Bastard treads a line between penitence and antagonism, while an untitled existential number suggests he has been ruminating over his own mortality, crooning how it's a "Long, long way to the top".

This is a lesson Rice has learned over the past decade – but how comforting it must be to know that when you are ready to return, there is an adoring audience waiting. They will wait a bit longer, surely.