Damien Rice has recently completed a sold-out UK arena tour. All well and good, but you can’t half think that the punters in the cheap seats missed out on the intensity of seeing the emotional artist’s emotional artist at close quarters. At Islington’s intimate Union Chapel, there’s no escaping this human whirlwind, however.

This eight-track CD was recorded in February 2003. Containing songs from Rice’s critical and commercial smash of a debut, O, which came out the year before, it also features three never-before-released tracks. They all justify the Daily Telegraph’s dubbing of Rice’s work as “extraordinary, beautiful and brutal”.

Yet it’s not entirely a one-man show. Long-term collaborator Lisa Hannigan deserves to be name-checked too. Especially for the album’s closer, her haunting version of ‘Silent Night’ which sees singer and venue fuse to the extent they almost appear to be a single entity.
(4/5)