Damien Rice returns with first bit of new music in 8 years on ‘My Favourite Faded Fantasy’

Here’s something a lot of people have been waiting for.

My Favourite Faded Fantasy is Damien Rice’s first album in 8 years and it will be released October 31st. It was produced by none other than Rick Rubin alongside Rice.

Rice has trailed the album with the title track, which goes from picked folk to sweeping orchestrals with Rice singing about a partner who is unmatched by others as the song builds in dynamics. The song is on Spotify today. ‘I Don’t Want To Change You”, the first single proper will debut later this month.

Full song:

Trailer:

From the press release:

“Sometimes you have to step away from what you love in order to learn how to love it again,” says Rice regarding the long gap between albums. Whilst fans would repeatedly ask “when?,” for Rice the real question had shifted to “why make an album at all?” My Favourite Faded Fantasy suggests that the answer may have been staring right back at him all along. Here is a selection of songs, which Rice says are “sung straight into the metaphorical mirror.” Intimate, frank and revitalized by making music again, ‘My Favourite Faded Fantasy’ is a record that accepts one’s faults but also begins, perhaps, to appreciate one’s ability to grow up.

The recording process with producer Rubin began in Los Angeles and finished up in Iceland. “I came to Rick mostly based on what I didn’t know about him, rather than what I did,” describes Rice. “For some reason I just had a feeling that I would feel comfortable being open and being me and being vulnerable with Rick.” Rubin, meanwhile, first saw Rice play live around the release of O, and recalls that “he was my favorite new artist at the time. A lot of our work together was to help him see what was so clear to everyone else in the room.” Rice then went from Los Angeles to Iceland and assembled a cast of friends and local musicians to complete My Favourite Faded Fantasy against the stunning backdrop of Reykjavik.