RECORD RACK

"9" (Heffa/Vector/Warner Bros)

Lofty ambitions of a wild Irish rose

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THE final 15-plus minutes of Irishman Rice's second album is what seems to be silence. Turn it up and it's actually a nearly inaudible ambient tone. Pretentious? Sure. But also practical. After the preceding 52 minutes of sometimes vertiginous swings between anger, tenderness, despair, joy, loving embraces, enraged rejections, sketch-like understatement and purposeful overkill, you'll need some time to just breathe.

The album (in stores Nov. 14) starts with a different kind of breath, the gorgeous soprano of Rice's regular vocal partner, Lisa Hannigan, rather than Rice himself. From there, Rice and his chamber-like band achieve Van Morrison-Jeff Buckley expressiveness as he traverses the treacherous contours of modern love with the deft, literary dynamics of an audacious novel.

There are not as many revelations as on Rice's acclaimed 2002 debut, "O," but it still can be sonically thrilling.

He also extends his talent for turning the seemingly prosaic into the starkly poetic: "Do you brush your teeth before you kiss?" he asks a departed lover, a solitary piano shadowing the words. It's so involving that by the time Hannigan's voice, solo again, trails out resignedly on "Sleep Don't Weep," there is nothing left but to breathe.

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Albums are rated on a scale of four stars (excellent), three stars (good), two stars (fair) and one star (poor). Albums reviewed are already in stores except as indicated.