"i love your depression and i love your double chin"

I'm eternally grateful to my little brother who introduced me to Damien Rice's first Album, "O." It has carried me through happy days and sad days. It is one of the few albums that i fell in love with immediately. I was playing it in Denver one of the first nights that Sam came over to visit. He says that he fell in love with me to "The Blower's Daughter." That makes me so happy. "I can't take my eyes off of you."

I've waited for years now for him to release something new, yet never tiring of, "O." He will release his next album in the U.S. early next week. In the meantime, he allows his fans to hear the album in it's entirety online. Though I wanted to hear more from him, I have to be honest...I was worried...I thought there was no way he could make an album as beautiful as his first.

I was wrong. Happily wrong.

I don't claim to be any sort of music critic. There actually isn't that much music that I would be inspired to critique. But here's my review: wow.

It awakened in me something that had been asleep for a long time. The album made me want to start painting again, to take photos, to write, to create. Those are the things that make me happy and I had not been inspired to create anything new, until I heard this album. So I don't think it's a stretch to say as Jack Nicholson once said in a movie; it makes me want to be a better person.