Sinead O'Connor - Universal Mother

Sinead O'Connor has transcended much of the pain and anger of her public persona with this moody, evocative set of songs. Touching upon themes of fraternity and maternity with folkish grace and childlike metaphors, O'Connor's Universal Mother reveals aspects of her longings and fears in cryptic freeze frames of song and sorcery that are haunting in their simplicity, and unsettling in their focus on doomed innocents.

Consecrated to the world's mothers and children, and dedicated "as a prayer from Ireland," Universal Mother opens with an invocation from Germaine Greer, and the ominous overture "Fire In Babylon." With its menacing bassline and swirling mix of jazz samples and keyboards, it echoes Peter Gabriel, P.I.L. and Robert Fripp with its portents of dissolution and doom ("Life's backwards/People turn it around/The house is burned...The children are gone."). The penultimate "Famine" acts as a psychic bookend. Following a wolf's cry and an echo of "Fiddler On The Roof," the arrangement lurches forward with a hip hop collage of Miles Davis and the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby," as O'Connor's narrative essays the destruction of Irish culture and history.

In between, O'Connor's intimate confessionals are framed in folkish piano accompaniments, with spare brushstrokes of strings. From the tender "My Darling Child," to a poignant cover of Kurt Cobain's "All Apologies," O'Connor's dark chamber music focuses on the joys and heartaches of childhood, scary tales of abuse, alientation from her family, and other painful rites of passage. Universal Mother is an enigmatic, deeply personal portrait of the artist in flux--a triumph of compassion over rage.