SinA©ad O'Connor - Universal Mother

Thank You For Singing Me, Sinead......

I love this record, mostly for her song "Thank You For Hearing Me." This song is so smooth, and I haven't felt boring in listening to. Sinead is always the best for her fans like me though. September 6, 2008

Time Cannot Diminish O'Connors' Bright Flame

"Universal Mother" is an underrated gem within Sinead O'Connor's amazing catalog of albums. Chances are, you've probably never heard of this CD, nor do many of the reviews here do it full justice. Personally, I consider this to be her greatest album, followed very closely by her big-band classic "Am I Not Your Girl?". Both CDs are criminally overlooked even by Sinead fans, but buy these to discover some of the `90s most undiscovered treasures.

"Universal Mother" is chock-full of good songs. Some of these I would hail as instant classics, and others take a while to grow on you. The best song here, "John I love You" is interesting in the way it changes tempo, meter and rhythm, all the while retaining the good old flavor of a traditional pop ballad. "In This Heart" is a totally acoustic rendition by O'Connor and her backing vocalists. This sort of stripped down Celtic sentiment works very well with the earth-mother concept this record was going for. Interestingly, the song that most people remember as the `big single' from this album - "Fire on Babylon" - is the least attention-grabbing track.

"Famine", a spoken word lament on Irish history will teach you everything you need to know about the Irish Political Psyche in three minutes, and "Scorn not his Simplicity" is poignant and touching with a chorus to kill for. Also on this release is the underground European hit "Thank you for Hearing Me", a much celebrated song that harkens to the best of Sineads' vocal recordings. But the standout for me is "Red Football" - this is a very unusual track that totally dispenses with meter or tune and instead sets itself up for some loud, blaring music at the end of the track - but weirdly it all works, and will have you reaching for the repeat button.

Get this album to discover some really rock-solid pop songs. I've had this for about a decade now, in some form or the other, and just last week dumped the whole thing on my Ipod. It sounds better than ever.

Rock fans, Sinead does a killer rare cover of Nirvana's "All Apologies" on this CD. Worth every cent.

Five Stars.
January 29, 2008

An Opera

Oh, how soon they forget. O'Connor was already a major, Grammy-nominated "star" with a multi-platinum album ('Lion & Cobra') and a slew of international Modern Rock hit singles even before her freakishly mesmerizing crossover success with the Prince "cover" (Nothing Compares 2 U) in 1990.

Then, she protested institutional child-abuse in the RC Church in 1992 by "shredding" a little piece of paper on SNL, and two years later she gave "birth" (one would think literally) to this album, which cracked the Billboard Top 40 and made critics & fans churn with praise. The disc went-on to shift a couple of million units, and it's easy to see why O'Connor retained such a huge audience even after enormous controversy and boycott.

Like the gorgeous, ineffable Joni Mitchell, O'Connor steadfastly bucked every "standard" and did so brilliantly with this little "number." This album is the quintessential definition of an "album." 'Universal Mother' is a song-cycle of great pretension and bombast and harrowing vulnerability, but only a singer-songwriter like O'Connor (or perhaps the divine Mitchell, for that matter) could have pulled something like this "off."

Her opener, 'Fire on Babylon' is still one of the most scorchingly weird pieces of "protest-brilliance" ever committed to record. You've got loads of Sinead-ammunition with nuances of Peter Gabriel, some Kate Bush, some Joni, and SERIOUS funk-fusions that *nobody* was doing at the time. Forget boundaries; this chick was so outside-the-box that she created her own box. And it worked. The song still gives anyone with a soul the heebie-jeebies (or ought to). Then, O'Connor (after dropping the musical equivalent of a nuke), starts dusting and doing a 'Mother Teresa' amid the fallout with "John I Love U"--a waltz!!! Up next? Well, you have bared fangs about women's reproductive rights on 'Red Football' and the spookiest cover of Cobain's 'All Apologies' that is ever likely to be put down. 'Nuff said.

It only gets more chilling: stormy Irish seas and magically-transformed swan-people press against the brain with 'Perfect Indian,' wherein O'Connor sings of suicide and mythology with the kind of vocal clarity that could not only shatter a window-pane, but scour-it-clean beforehand.

A gut-wrenching cover of Ralph McTell's "Scorn Not His Simplicity" (stark piano-ode to a Downs-Syndrome Child's struggle to be loved) sets-up the blood-curdlingly Gothic 'All Babies' and then segues toward one of the most utterly original, brilliant, hair-raisingly rendered Irish "tradtionals" in history...only it wasn't "traditional" (O'Connor wrote & performed it for the album). Go figger.

A greasy, drop-dead sincere "rap" about the real origin of the Irish Potato Famine comes next (with the recurrent theme of nation-as-mother, mother-as-mother, Reason-as-mother) and then the elegiac hip-hop of 'Thank You 4 Hearing Me'--a soaring hymn loaded with Tim Simenon's ultra-funk that became a massive hit for Sinead in Europe, after USA radio had long refused to play her singles.

The whole thing is an opera, and O'Connor (being one of the true few who really deserves the legit title of "diva") constructs this record as a total drama from which she deftly blasts, bickers, belts, brays, bleats...and then caresses, careens, cuddles, and croons a spellbinding tale of "motherhood" is bracing, to say the least.

It's also probably the best record you forgot to buy, from the '90s.

The fact that it sold so well, two years after O'Connor had chucked-up her mainstream superstardom, is a testament to how extremely good was this disc. It does, indeed, remind me of some of Joni Mitchell's opuses (and some BIG time Nina Simone, honey!)...wherein O'Connor was blithely not afraid to throw the curviest of balls and make it all astonishingly SUPREME, in the end.

This is one of those records. The amazing thing about O'Connor is that she went-on to "rule" according to her own terms, with albums like this...just outside the spotlight, but big-selling and earth-shattering. Listen to this--start-to-finish--and see if you don't get the proverbial goosebumps. A classic for its daring fusion & experimentalism alone, and no mistake.

A Desert Island disc for the "Voice" and the passion, as usual.

October 6, 2007

Universal Genius

Allow me to begin by stating that I own most everything Sinead has recorded to date, the acquisition of which has proven quite a challenge. (Her version of "Sacrifice" for instance, on the Elton John tribute album "Two Rooms," is to my mind one of her finest achievements--same for "Lullaby for Cain" on "The Talented Mr. Ripley" soundtrack, but I digress.)

Of her album releases, "Universal Mother" is my second favorite as I consider "Sean-Nos-Nua" to be the acme of her career thus far. I would give U.M. five stars if for no other reason than "A Perfect Indian," certainly one of the most exquisitely gorgeous, personal, poetic, and heartbreaking ballads ever composed in "popular" music. It is a dark and gentle masterpiece that, among other considerations, documents her flirtation with suicide: "Too long have I been feeling like Lir's children and there's only one way to be free." Google `Lir's children,' an ancient Celtic legend, to further comprehend this obscure and brilliantly utilized reference, Lir being the genitive case of `Lear.' Another significant aspect of this legend is its angry sea imagery, mirrored in the lines: "I'm sailing on this terrible ocean," and "And there I saw a young baby. A beautiful daughter was she. A face from a painting, red cheeks and teeth aching, her eyes like a wild Irish sea."--an accurate description of Sinead herself. The remembrance of a love-no-more underlines the fragility, and all-too-oftentimes impermanence, of love, and thematically frames the song's emotional anchor. Most interestingly, the lover is compared to `the elf arrow' which, translated into Gaelic, means `Lancelot,'--another dazzling double entendre: "Like the elf arrow, his face worn and harrowed, is he a daydreamer like me?" This song, though by no means the only example of Sinead's gargantuan talent on this diverse concept album, is a quietly understated work of genius, and I have never used that word lightly. Phil Coulter's plaintive piano work, the sole accompaniment to Sinead's restrained vocal, is exemplary, flawless.

My other reasons for the five star rating include the vitriolic "Fire on Babylon, the tender lullaby, "My Darling Child," her stripped-to-the-bone acoustic reading of Curt Cobain's "All Apologies," the magnificently harmonic, a cappella, "In This Heart," which affirms the link between early Anglo-Saxon ballad construction and American bluegrass, and finally, "Famine" (to my knowledge her only rap song), a politically significant reconsideration of the Irish Famine in the 19th century. I am extremely pleased that the other reviewers count among their favorites many of the album's compositions that I have not mentioned.

Think what you will about Sinead's political outspokenness--I, for one, admire her courageous Saturday Night Live moment--or her limited record sales. O'Connor, in my humble opinion, remains among the most important artists of our times, in the truest, most comprehensive definition of the word `artist.'
April 3, 2007

A couple of the songs are - different

I tend to agree with the other reviewers. Only about 3/4 the songs on this album make it worth buying. But, about half of those are so passionate and powerful and the others have her sweetly crooning - just what we love about Miss Sinead. I always skip "A Perfect Indian", "Scorn Not His Simplicity", "Tiny Grief Song", and "Thank You For Hearing Me". My favorites are the waltzy "John, I Love You" (she shows her range in this one), and the empowering "Red Football" makes me feel like I'm coming out of a huddle. Oh, and "Famine" is the reason I bought this album. I had to pull of the highway the first time I heard Mother Teresa play this on EOI. I like the political and religious slant of this album. I especially appreciated the charge of the goddess on the jacket. June 27, 2006

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