Sinéad O’Connor fans will want to invest in Theology: Live At The Sugar Club, a limited-edition deluxe CD/DVD, which is available exclusively from sineadoconnor.com.
Having had a whale of a time readying it for the Meteors, Sinéad O’Connor and Republic Of Loose have decided to release their cover of Curtis Mayfield’s ‘We People Who Are Darker Than Blue’.
Sinead’s voice and the band, honed from months on the road, are at the absolute peak of their powers. Lots of fans I spoke to afterwards felt they’d never heard her sound better.
The optimistic title of this track almost sets itself up for failure, but in this case ‘Something Beautiful’ is a fitting tribute. This is vintage Sinéad, her distinctive voice still soaring although it sounds more world-weary than before. ‘Something Beautiful’ has a sacred air and the lyrics are laced with religious imagery (befitting of an album named Theology) but it is not so overtly religious that it suffocates the magic.
Shane MacGowan interviews Sinead O’Connor for hotpress, with Olaf Tyaransen acting as referee. On the day, Victoria Clark also sat in. What followed turned into a wide-ranging and often hilarious exchange of almost Beckettian dimensions.
Sinéad O’Connor's voice is still capable of enchanting you with its fragility and blowing you away with its power, but maybe we all expected that, because at first it’s the bravely mixed set-list that grabs your attention.
From her forthcoming Theology album, this version of the Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber classic from the Jesus Christ Superstar rock opera almost seems tailor-made for the controversial chanteuse. Originally sung in the musical/movie by Mary Magdalene (expressing her confused feelings for Jesus just before the crucifixion) it was seen as blasphemous in some quarters in its day and even now the lyrics would raise an eyebrow or two. Of course Sinéad sings it beautifully with no little passion while stylistically and sonically it’s the nearest thing she’s done to ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ in ages and could well prove a winner.
Sinead O'Connor isn't exactly one to take things lying down, and some US websites are about to find this out for themselves. In an exclusive chat with Hot Press she puts the story straight and talks about her next album. Only here folks!
Having covered two of his songs on her Throw Down Your Arms album, Sinéad O’Connor duets with Lee “Scratch” Perry on the American version of his Panic In Babylon set.
Who’d have bet money on Sinéad O’Connor making such an acclaimed return to music with any album, let alone one made up of old reggae tunes? Still, that’s about the size of it and Untold Stories is one of that particular record’s stand out moments and ironically one of its least dub influenced. Instead, O’Connor focuses on the folk element of Jamaican music to stirring effect and ends up sounding more resonant than we might have reasonably expected. Mighty stuff.
Tonight, from Bob Marley’s ‘War’ to Burning Spear’s ‘Jah Nuh Dead’, Sinéad O’Connor and her sidekicks deliver in spades. On a musical level, the reggae-fuelled set is funky, moving and, above all, inspiring.
With characteristic unpredictability, Sinéad has re-emerged after a period in retirement with a Rasta album, in which she covers a collection of her own personal reggae classics.
Proffering a delicious taste of her forthcoming album, Throw Down Your Arms, due for release this autumn, Sinead O’Connor thrilled punters at the Prime Minister’s 2005 Independence Gala in Jamaica with her impassioned version of Bob Marley’s ‘War’, accompanied on drum and bass by famous riddim twins, Sly and Robbie.
It's almost two years since Sinead O'Connor announced her retirement from music. However, it was always on the cards that she would find her voice again. The good news is that she has. She explains all in an exclusive interview with Niall Stokes...
She’d been a shadow player around the Dublin and London scenes, collaborating with In Tua Nua and World Party, but few could have expected young Ensign signing Sinéad O’Connor to produce such a turbulent, mercurial debut album.
"Sinéad was pretty relaxed. She didn’t tap into the ‘making a record for the label’ thing. She made music for her own reasons, which were deeper than that. That’s why the songs ring so true..."
This is a fitting memorial to Sinéad’s relentless struggle to transcend the mundane, the vacuous and the predictable. As a farewell album it’ll do fine until the next one.
Other Voices: Songs From A Room director Philip King reacts to news of Sinead O'Connor's retirement from public life - and praises "one of the world's very best singers"
In one of the most dramatic developments in Irish music in decades, Sinead O'Connor has said that she will retire from the music business in three months time
The most important female Irish artist of the last decade-and-a-half shuffles self-consciously onto the stage to a truly warm Mayo welcome. She looks healthy, rested and fighting fit.
Music Review | Live
24 Oct 2002
Sean Walsh
She looks healthy, rested and fighting fit. Her band, consisting of bass, drums, banjo/whistle, cello, guitar and keyboards/ accordion, look like they’re here for a groove-laden run through some trad tunes, which, it transpires, they certainly are
STEVE FARGNOLI, the artist manager who numbered SINÉAD O'CONNOR among his clients, lost his battle with cancer earlier this month.
STEPHEN ROBINSON reports
It s been four years since the last Siniad O Connor album. By any standards, even for a major artist, that s a long time, inevitably heightening speculation about where Siniad s muse was likely to take her.
Sinéad O'Connor's records don't necessarily reveal themselves speedily. I know that, on the first hearing, 'The Lion and the Cobra' seemed to me an ill-fitting match of various discordant styles. I didn't really crack it 'till its sixth time round my turntable.
At the tender age of seventeen, Dubliner Sinéad O'Connor packed up Ton Ton Macoute, packed her bags and headed for London. Two years on she's had a few close shaves, recorded with the Edge and is on the verge of seriously launching her career with an album in January. Interview: Molly McAnailly Burke.
