Sinead O'Connor, Faith and Courage
Sinead O'Connor is a pure soul. She is like whatever the ideal material is for conducting electricity--it seems that whatever current goes in comes out just as strong. If she is angry, she is publicly, violently angry. If she is in love, she expresses it with rich, all-consuming tenderness. A lot of artists are like this--they let themselves be conduits of emotion. It's just that most learn to turn it off when they leave the stage, and (though she's matured over the years) Sinead mostly...doesn't. This is what gets her in trouble. Accept whatever she says as a product of the prevalent emotion of the moment, subject to change in a matter of seconds, and she's not too upsetting.
The first track of this album should have been "The Lamb's Book of Life," a vision for the future and a mea culpa for the past. "I know that I've done many things/To give you reason not to listen to me," she sings. "I just hope that you can show compassion/And love me enough to just please listen."
Go ahead. Listen. In this song you'll hear what should have never worked--Jamaican rhythms and Irish melodies, neither of which is watered down into cultureless "world music" but instead pinned together in all their vivid difference. The last track on the album is a similar hybrid--an old, old setting of the "Kyrie Eleison" from the Mass (I'd call it the Latin Mass but this number's in Greek) swept along with Rastafarian background chatter, pipes and whistles, and a skipping drum heartbeat. It is so life-affirming I'm tempted to start my own church just to play it as the Gospel book is danced up the aisle.
The mood swings in every direction on this album but all the songs are open throated--singing along is like washing pain away or soaking up the joy. The theology can sound strange at times--she seems equal parts Catholic, pagan, and Rastafarian--but if her religion is this good, I'll let her write a gospel.
It's a pity Sinead's record company didn't have as much faith and courage as she does. Atlantic dropped her after this album.