Making up for lost time, Damien Rice ticks all the boxes at Live at the Marquee

Damien Rice doesn’t do frills on stage.

With haunting, sweet vocals and an arching falsetto, he doesn’t need to, as new fans and old found to their delight at his Cork concert on Monday night, part of the Live at the Marquee summer season.

This was a comeback gig as the Irish singer-songwriter didn’t do much of anything for almost a decade — disillusioned with the music industry to such an extent that he took an extended break.

After two successful and highly critically acclaimed albums — 2002’s O and 2006’s 9 — he had lost his mojo and what started as a year off turned into eight.

He must have tested his fans’ patience to the extreme, but, if his Marquee performance is anything to go by, it was worth the wait as the true artist emerged, determined to make up for lost time.

“I have tried but I don’t fit. Into this box I’m living with. I could go wild. But you might lock me up,” he sings on ‘The Box,’ a song from his latest album, My Favourite Faded Fantasy, a dreamy, spellbinding tour de force.

It looks like he has finally broken out of that box and, while he says he doesn’t care whether his comeback is a commercial success or not, you feel it will be.

Artistry, like murder, will always out.

He has found his mojo in more ways than one — exhibiting a maturity in both his songwriting and singing.

Those angst-ridden lyrics are still very much there, but the delivery — like his newer material — is more mellow.

He can still belt it out, though, zooming from whisper to banshee on a single note.

Listening to him live is like getting a musical massage that reaches those hard to get at places.

It is at once breathless, intense, and intimate and you get the impression he plays what he would like to listen to if he were in the audience.