Bowling For Ireland

Damien Rice and The Frames can put on one hell of a live show, but they can’t bowl to save their lives.

After the two bands stopped into Boston’s Avalon Theater and played two emotionally energetic sets for the sold-out house, they made their way down the street for some beers and a few frames of bowling, opting out of another night on the road. The show, which landed smack in the middle of their North American tour, had provided fans and newcomers alike with the chance to hear what Damien and Glen have been up to since their last US appearance. To judge by the number of balls in the gutter afterwards, it hasn’t been honing their skills in the bowling alley.
Not to worry – the Rice star remains firmly in the ascendant. Already, he’s able to pull 2,000 punters pretty much everywhere he goes in the States now. And rising…
Just when it looks like he’s peaked in terms of popularity, along comes another David Letterman Show appearance and a new bunch of converts are made. The 30-year-old’s too modest to mention it, but a roadie confides that recent additions to the fan club include Renee Zellweger, George Clooney, Nicolas Cage and Friends star Matthew Perry, who was in the crowd for the LA Wiltern Theater show, which, as anyone who caught the Boston show would attest, is the way it should be.
A freshly shorn Rice led his crew onto the stage in silence before launching into the bulk of his O album, which has just sold its 300,000th copy in the States. Here, the show undulated with piercing and distorted guitars, crisp strings and the haunting combination of Damien and Lisa Hannigan’s vocals, drawing huge cheers from an audience many of whom seemed to know every song by heart. First-time attendees, used to hearing Rice only on their stereos, were treated to a performance that included more abstract interpretations of ‘Eskimo Friend’ and ‘Volcano’, layered with Damien’s lustful vocals.
In the audience, one reviewer compared Rice to American balladeer Don McLean. “He’s like John Mayer with balls,” another impressed crowd member commented. For her part, Lisa draws mad cheers when she approaches the microphone, playing Tina to Damien’s Ike, the crowd recognising that these melodies would be incomplete without her inimitable voice. While some critics find the Celbridge man too mellow, tonight the band dragged some of their more easy listening tracks through the mud with floods of distortion and an outpouring of cathartic howls. Many in the crowd stood mesmerised by the raw passion of ‘I Remember’‚ while others swayed with eyes closed to ‘Cannonball’.
Audience well and truly won over, he debuted two new songs – the subtly funky ‘Baby Sister’ and a John Prine-like acoustic number, ‘The Professor’, which was dedicated to “all the testosterone-filled women and men in the audience.”
Rice’s penchant for throwing in snatches of other people’s songs meant that The Police’s ‘Walking On The Moon’ and Portishead’s ‘Glory Box’ were added to a list which, on this leg of the tour, also includes Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’, Kylie’s ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ and ‘Silent Night’.
The show finished with an extended encore, featuring cellist Vivienne Long’s solo version of The White Stripes’ ‘Seven Nation Army’, a stripped-down ‘Cold Water’ and a Frames-assisted ‘Blower’s Daughter’, which was interwoven with Radiohead’s ‘Creep’. A mass fiddle, guitar and bongo jam later and, that was it, show over.

When I got a word with Damien afterwards, he said that both bands have been well received at every show, although even he wasn’t quite sure exactly where they were due to play next. “When is the gig in Vermont?” I ask. “Vermont?” says Damien looking dumbfounded. “Are we playing there? Is that a State?”
His confusion is understandable, considering that the tour will hit 25 cities in just over a month. Before their East Coast swing, Rice and The Frames gigged throughout the West Coast and Midwestern US in a variety of venues, ranging from concert halls to smaller, more intimate locales. So how, I ask Glen Hansard, does a crowd in, let’s say, Boise, Idaho compare to one in Dublin?
“The Irish are ambassadors of music,” he reflects enigmatically, “so we have an obligation to everyone.”
Judging by the response in Boston, the bands should continue to find success for the remainder of their tour which includes newly added dates in Chicago and New York.
“This is an opportunity to make a very definite step forwards,” Glen resumes. “Damien’s success over here has been amazing, and for us to stand under the tree and catch a little bit of the fruit has been really nice.”
Of course, it wasn’t too long ago that Rice was doing the supporting.
“He came on tour with us, that’s how he started his solo career,” Hansard explains. “Then he came to us and said, ‘Listen, I’d like to bring you on this tour because things are going really well in the States. You’d be playing much bigger rooms. You were the band that really helped me. I’m a bit embarrassed to offer it to you because I know that, at home, people won’t understand the logic of you opening for me, but I think it would be really good.’”
Along with the reaction of people at shows, Glen & Co. have been buoyed by positive reviews in Rolling Stone (“The Frames set dark Radiohead-style arena rock over textures ranging from craggy folk grooves to guitar-heavy punk thrash”); Alternative Press (“They thunder like U2 calibre arena rock spiked with furious guitar thunderstorms”); and The Onion (“Thoroughly trumping U2 in the categories of warmth, modesty and fearlessness”).
With column inchage like that, it’s no wonder that The Frames’ American record company Anti- are giving their Set-List album an almighty promotional push at the moment.
David Farrell, lead singer of the Boston-by-way-of-Cork band Rubyhorse, seemed even more impressed than the fans outside the Avalon. He believes this tour will generate a renaissance in Irish music. “It’s a resurgence,” he says, “and these guys are leading the way.”
Now, if only they could keep those bowling balls out of the gutter.