Sinead O'Connor is recovering. You can see it in her hair, which has grownfrom a severe army crew-cut to a soft, feminine style; and you can hear it inher voice, which is clear as ice and uncracked by inner care. She's puttingher megastar years behind her and throwing herself headlong into the business of being a singer-songwriter; no longer assailed by the slings andarrows of outraged extremists, she is free to be what she always was - thegreatest female singer ever to emerge from Ireland's shores.
Once, she wanted to play Joan of Arc, but nowadays she gets to be theVirgin Mary, in Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy; onstage, however, she isFlorence Nightingale, healing the wounds of the heart with a voice likecamomile.
Last Thursday night, at the Olympia, O'Connor was joined onstage by hersupport band, The Screaming Orphans, and the four sisters from Donegaljoined with their spiritual sister in a chorus of redemption and salvation.She got the anger out of the way early, tossing the Emperor's New Clothesinto the fire before enduring the ritual sacrifice of I Am Stretched On YourGrave.
She also dispensed with the dodgy political polemic and only This Is A Rebel Song threatened to undermine her reclamation of musical integrity.Thief Of Your Heart, on the other hand, says more about politics than anythinly-disguised manifesto, while the self-effacing Thank You For Hearing Meshould be required listening for any would-be demagogue.
Those with ears were rewarded with some haunting harmonies sung a cappella, followed by a searing version of Fire In Babylon and a soothing,valedictory Last Day Of Our Acquaintance. True to form, Sinead encoredwith Bob Marley's redemption song, ending with a hushed, harrowing renditionof She Moved Through The Fair. Silence.
