DAMIEN RICE
9 Heffa ****

It would be very easy to see Damien Rice's new album as an extension of his 2002 debut, O - each record is sparsely produced, and each contains songs that will be/are loved and loathed in equal measure. Yet, where O was a slow-burning bolt from the blue, gaining ground leisurely but surely to the point where it has made Rice a very rich man, 9 comes from a consolidated, perhaps more intuitive place. Like O's material, the songs here also seep into you, and, aside from one major error - the baffling self-indulgence of Me, My Yoke and I will provide all of Rice's most vehement critics with enough ammunition to gun him down for the next few years - the remaining tracks contain some of the most honest expressions of emotional intensity you're likely to hear for quite some time.

There is little of Rice's perceived hippy-dippy preciousness here; reality checks have clearly been placed on red alert, with the likes of hardline songs such as 9 Crimes, The Animals Were Gone, Rootless Tree, Coconut Skins and Grey Room. All of these are sturdy studies of emotional issues and, as such, a theme emerges: the often frustrating/joyous experiences of happenstance. If most of these aforementioned songs could easily soundtrack Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise, then Accidental Babies could have been especially written for the sequel, Before Sunset. The song is a brilliantly insightful distillation of hard knocks and difficult choices, the wear and tear of a relationship's what-ifs, maybes and whys, and who knows how it will all end?

The album starts superbly (9 Crimes) and finishes on a freaky ambient note (Sleep Don't Weep; keep an ear out for the "hidden" lengthy tone-poem). In between is, by and large, surely the best confessional and most candid album of the year.