SINÉAD O’CONNOR – HOW ABOUT I BE ME (AND YOU BE YOU)?
One Little Indian

It’s fair to say that Sinéad O’Connor is better known for her…erm… ‘interesting’ private life than her music – still headline worthy over twenty years after her only real commercial success, it’s rarely her music that is written about. The last year alone has seen her advertising on Twitter for a boyfriend, marrying a respondent, splitting with him, reconciling, attempting suicide and being hospitalised: a hectic time by anyone’s standards, and so it’s perhaps unsurprising that her new album – her ninth, and the first in five years – might struggle to be heard outside of the media circus (or, indeed, that more cynical commentators might think this flurry of headline-making activity is little more than a publicity drive). Whatever the truth and whatever is going on in O’Connor’s life, there’s no denying that at her best, she’s proved to be a remarkable talent, and in a just world, this new LP wouldn’t need anything other than the music to sell it.

And there’s plenty here to recommend – a collection of dark, sometimes passionate, sometimes cynical observations on love and morality. Some see her looking through the eyes of others – Reason with Me is a haunting tale of a junkie seeking redemption from the victims of his crime – and some are painfully vitriolic. Take Off Your Shoes is a bitter attack from the point of view of Christ on the Catholic church (an old sparring partner for O’Connor) and it’s paedophile scandals - “I bleed the blood of Jesus over you / And over every fucking thing you do” spits O’Connor as the song opens. It’s a brutally savage track, showing that she’s lost none of her righteous fury in the last two decades. And that all comes through on the cover of John Grant’s Queen of Denmark, a brutally cynical tale of self-destruction and narcissism that could have been written for her, and closing track VIP, a prescient attack on celebrity culture and the stars – specifically U2’s gobshite hypocrite Bono SINÉAD O’CONNOR – HOW ABOUT I BE ME (AND YOU BE YOU)?– who have chased fame and influence, supported political monsters and kept silent on the Church’s scandals.

Other songs are surprisingly sweet – Old Lady is an upbeat story of a woman waiting for love to evolve from friendship, infectiously bouncy and with a genuine charm, while Back Where You Belong is a bittersweet tale of love and separation. Single The Wolf Is Getting Married is another up-tempo, joyful number – a chart hit in another, better universe.

In the end, this is a collection of songs about love and hate, regret and defiance that is -perhaps unsurprisingly from an artist who has lived her life in the glare of frequently sniggering headlights - raw, passionate and honest. And remarkably beautiful. If you allow tabloid mockery and eccentric behaviour to get in the way of that, you’ll be losing out.

DAVID FLINT

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