Main Stage, Witnness 03

"Who’s he?” an English girl squawks behind me into her mobile phone. “I thought it was David Gray, but it doesn’t look like him.” Jesus. You’re not on Jools any more, Damo. It’s probably a mark of how exquisite this afternoon’s performance is, however – how emotive and positively full of subtlety and passion and light and shade – that it outshines the rowdy mixture of let’s-see-whoever festival spirit and singalonga lairiness it is so ardently and delicately pitched into.

Mind you, this Main Stage crowd, in the main (so to speak), know very well who they are, and hang on every note of this soaring, melancholic, celebratory set. Early highlights like the soul-searching ‘Eskimo’ and the sharp, bitter melancholy of ‘What I Am’ confirm that they will not just be going through the motions today – but it’s during a ranting, blustering ‘Woman Like A Man’, a few songs in, that the set truly explodes into life, Damien’s guitar blazing as he and Lisa growl through the chorus (the onscreen cameras, hilariously, cutting away from Lisa every time she gets to the line “You wanna be fucked inside out”, as if such venom emitting from such a delicate beauty is slightly too much reality TV).
But the most interesting and beautiful element of Damien Rice’s music, for this writer, has always been its intrinsic duality, the shifting, blood-and-regret-soaked push-and-pull between its two main protagonists (Damien as the blackguard with a heart of gold, always ruining the beautiful thing despite himself, learning nothing; Lisa as the woman who cares too much and knows his better self too well) and as they are both on perfect form today, their performance is all highlights, through and through.
There’s a sublime ‘Cannonball’, where Lisa steps away from the mic to swing streamers above her in the air; a Nina Simone steal, Lisa singing a capella, Damien thumping a guitar on the ground in percussive accompaniment; a heartbreaking ‘I Remember’; an absolutely mesmerising ‘Cold Water’, where the hairs rise on the back of your neck as Lisa reaches its soprano apex, her eyes closed, turning her face slightly from side to side as she sings, as if she’s watching the melody in her head as it rises into the late afternoon sun: even Damien smiles at her, gobsmacked.
They finish with a swinging, elegiac ‘Blower’s Daughter’, Damien lost inside its dark revery, singing “I can’t take my eyes off you” and meaning it to his very bones, the cello humming beneath him, the crowd singing joyously along.
Really gorgeous. Can’t wait to see where they all go.