When the stubborn professor Otto Lidenbrock deciphered the alchemist Arne Saknussemm's cryptogram, he concluded that it was possible to travel to the center of the Earth. If you descended through the crater of a dull volcano in Iceland, you could reach the deepest part of the planet, where there were oceans and wild lands belonging to Pleistocene eras. During their journey, Otto Lidenbrock and his nephew Axel were missing for many days to the point that some gave them up for dead, but they returned to tell of such a feat.
Like the main characters in Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne's wonderful book, when Damien Rice settled in Iceland about a decade ago, many also left him for dead. He completely disappeared and was without signs of life even longer than Professor Otto Lidenbrock and his nephew. Somehow Rice, one of the greatest talents of Irish music in the 21st century, had gone on his own journey to the center of the earth. Depressed by a sentimental breakup and weary of fame, Rice hid from the world in a haven on that huge island, populated by volcanoes, south of the Arctic Circle.
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There was a time, back in 2014, that his disappearance was highly commented. Where was Damien Rice? Ever since he left the band Juniper and became known as a solo artist in 2003 , this singer-songwriter, who tore all his clothes in his songs, had become one of the most fascinating musicians on the indie circuit with the album O. More that for his artistic explorations, his recognition came from the intensity of his interpretations. A sickly romantic, Rice made it feel like life was at stake when she sang. The passion of the old minstrels overflowed.
Behind that record, as great as a pounding heart, was another person. Her name was Lisa Hannigan. Even then, some articles mentioned this Irish singer as a member of the group or as a mere accompanist. It used to appear in that happy little print. However, Hannigan was not only Rice's great inspiration, to whom she dedicated her tears, longings and verses, but her crystalline voice was complemented by extraordinary symbiosis with the tear of the author of O. Hannigan made him stronger and better. Yes, better, or all that that has to do with shining in a special way when the other person is equal or more talented than you and, instead of blocking you, he moves away enough for you to take a run and then, in addition, he knows accompany you. All this was demonstrated again on album 9 and in a song like The Animals Were Gone, in which Rice's crying takes on a bucolic air when Lisa's voice appears from the shadows.
Like those mythological legends, Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan became sentimental partners and together they gave off during those years the aroma of the great essences. As Bob Dylan and Joan Baez were before, they were an enviable musical couple. Talented, handsome and captivating. They were until she said stop. Fed up with his artistic psychosis and feeling undervalued, Lisa left him in 2007. She went to find her way and found him. Lisa Hannigan started an acclaimed solo career. Instead, Rice, always obsessive and fragile, disappeared. Away from the spotlight and the stage, he went to Iceland, although that was known a long time later.
It is not well known how long the musician spent in Iceland. Maybe close to five years, maybe much less, or something more. Damien Rice himself must have lost count. Yes, it is known - because he told it in one of the few interviews he gave when he left the island - that the day he first arrived, a friend picked him up and took him to nature. That day was enough to decide to shut himself up on the island.
Iceland, a beautiful and wild land, is populated by myths and legends that speak of all kinds of beings such as elves, fairies, giants, dragons and sea beasts, among its lakes, cliffs, waterfalls, fjords, geysers and volcanoes, but Nothing compared to experiencing the sensation of tasting its hot waters. Boiling water from the ground in the middle of a place dotted by glaciers. It is like a story. There are stories that are not believed until they are known first hand. In the midst of her depression, Rice met what she called "an outdoor hot tub," referring to the hot springs she met on her first day in Iceland. "It was snowing at night and with volcanic rocks everywhere and I was saying to myself, 'Where the hell have I come from?'" He said. Surrounded by an untamed and ancient land, Rice rented a shelter and lived alone. He rarely went out, and many times he did it to go around that unique place with a van. Locked up on the island, he composed the songs for what would become My Faded Fantasy, the third album of his career, and an authentic emotional map of a man devastated by love and his own being.
If Professor Lidenbrock was determined to go down another 1,500 leagues to reach the center of the Earth, Rice was not far behind in My Favorite Faded Fantasy , published in 2014. His long songs - all but one, exceed five minutes - are like expeditions to the center of his heart, that organ that connects us to the mystery of life. He could have stayed halfway there and would have been worth it, but, with his scruffy beard and dazzled eyes, Rice responds to the assertion made by Axel, Lidenbrock's nephew, when the professor was crazy about achieving his goal: “There is nothing that intoxicates as much as the attraction of the abyss ”.
Damien Rice is one of those people who, when he falls into a well, instead of trying to climb up, he escapes down. As if sinking further I could find an impossible exit to another place. The wonderful madness is that it succeeds. He escapes with such force and tenacity that, endowed with a gift for minimalist folk-rock, he invents a hole that reaches new territory. With those impressive instrumental crescendos like boiling volcanoes and that magnetic voice, his songs go from less to more until they reach the deepest of feelings. It is a wild and prehistoric territory, belonging to that “vanished fantasy”, as the album's title says, and that reveals the beauty of the inexplicable.
Professor Otto Lidenbrock used to say: "As long as the heart beats, while the flesh beats, I do not understand that a being endowed with will is dominated by despair." While it is true that My Favorite Faded Fantasy is a desperate trip by Rice for everything she lost with the departure of Lisa Hannigan, even for her own ease of falling into the abyss, the album closes with Long Long Way , one more song six-minute journey that begins with these verses: "Long way to the top / Long way down if you fall / And it's a long way back if you get lost / Long way to the end." On that long road, Damien Rice traverses mountains, cliffs and glaciers, but in the end his heart beats and his flesh beats, astonishing and astonishing us with the magic of volcanic waters in the land of fire and ice.