Tilly And The Wall: O

Damien Rice's debut album O came out four months ago in his native Ireland, where his elastic voice and ambitious arrangements helped make him an instant star. If Rice doesn't receive the same treatment in the U.S., it won't be for lack of musical ambition: The dreamy, deliberately paced ballads that pack O aim for beauty that overwhelms as much as it intoxicates. Combining the directness of David Gray with the warmth and dramatic flair of Jeff Buckley, Rice certainly sounds like a star in the making, and in spots, O achieves graceful catharsis rarely matched anywhere. "The Blower's Daughter" and "Cannonball" flow together so seamlessly, the effect is almost dizzyingly pretty, while "Eskimo" closes the album on a climax so bracing, it could only culminate in full-blown opera. Not surprisingly, given the fact that Rice keeps opera stashed in his arsenal of genres, O's outsized dramatics court preciousness in spots, and absorbing the album in one sitting can be exhausting. Its songs are consistently lovely, to be sure, but they frequently cross the line into a sensory overload that borders on oppressiveness. Still, it's hard to fault Rice's instinct to simply drench O's 10 songs in beauty, from the Gregorian chants on "Cold Water" to the sweeping strings that close "Amie." In the end, all that audacity wouldn't matter much if it weren't carried out in the service of sturdy songwriting, and it's hard to imagine these tracks not working equally well without all the window dressing. For all his sonic ambition, Rice's greatest accomplishment on O is simply making the case that his is a voice worth hearing, regardless of its surroundings.