Sinéad O'Connor
How About I Be Me And You Be You?

THE REVIEW

Once you get past the horrid cover (here presented in its more acceptable version) and the cacophony of the title, we are faced with one of Sinéad "irish princess" O'Connor's most successful albums since "Universal Mother." Ten-tracks-ten that cover more or less all the musical territories the Irish singer-songwriter has explored in over 25 years of career. It begins with the afro-beat of "4th & Vine," we are moved by the ballads of "Reason With Me" and "Back Where You Belong" and land with the concluding, sparse, almost acappella, "V.I.P."

After years of rants, controversies, theme albums, marriages, divorces, faux-lesbianism, pregnancies, stick-it-to-the-church attitude, photo-ripping, tattoos, flying high, Bono-stay-bono, pedopriests, oprahwinfrey, faux bipolarity, tears&blood and twitter, Sinéad pulls a rabbit out of the hat with an album full of counterarguments, sung by God and in which the writing reunites with the fury of the "Lion & The Cobra" and the poetic breath of "I Do Not Want"...

Listen to "Take Off Your Shoes" to rediscover the crescendo of "Troy" plus the pathos of "Feel So Different." "Queen of Denmark" is a song by John Grant (his album is an absolute must-have) stripped of the original's roundness and to which Sinead tightens the testicles only to spit it out again, nasty, rough, definitive. A "Nothing Compares 2U" version 2.0 so to speak. Elsewhere, Sinead is motherly, calm, accommodating as in "Very Far From Home" or the wonderful "I Had A Baby." Musically, there's no overindulgence. John Reynolds has known Sinead for 30 years. He leaves space for the voice, beautiful (as in the precious "Sean nos nua" of 2002) and for the ambivalent character of the now forty-six-year-old matron.

"How about I be me..." is an album that Sinéad's fans will love dearly, due to its delightfully nostalgic flavor, but it will hardly win new followers. It's worth more than one listen.