This came out in 2000 — or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Damhnait Doyle is a little tense these days.
That much seems clear from the Labrador singer-songwriter’s accurately titled sophomore CD. Actually, strike that — if anything, Hyperdramatic is an understatement. On these 11 moody, downbeat tracks, the soulful Damhnait (pronounced Davnet) makes Fiona Apple seem like Britney Spears as she surveys the wrist-slashed wreckage of her romantic landscape. Taut, anxious trip-pop grooves parallel the obsessive guilt and angst of lyrics like “Open up your wounds / I will be the salt” and “I want to break, I want to fall / To be cut by the jagged edges as I learn to crawl.” Yikes! Transfixing and intense, she is without doubt — but you might still be glad you’re not out on a blind date with her. Maybe she should follow another one of her lines — “I suffer for things I should not suffer for” — and let herself off the hook just a tad.
