The Boston Herald
September 13, 1994 Tuesday FIRST EDITION

Sounds; O'Connor returns in a sorry state

By LARRY KATZ



   Listening to Sinead O'Connor's new album, "Universal Mother," is guaranteed
to provoke feelings of sorrow.

   Sorrow for O'Connor, still suffering from the horrendous abuse inflicted upon
her as a child

   And sorrow that you blew your money buying this dreary, disappointing CD
therapy session.

   After starting her career with two dazzling and powerful albums (and an
offbeat third album of standards and show tunes), the deeply troubled O'Connor,
now 27, has decided to let the turmoil of her personal and professional life
dominate her music. This may be good news to her shrink but not to music lovers.

   "Universal Mother," which arrives in stores today, shows few signs of an
artist in control of her craft. Instead, it's a messy patchwork quilt stitched
together by an unhappy O'Connor. What you hear is the desperate and erratic
Sinead of the gossip columns - the woman who ripped up the pope's photo on TV,
who let the boo birds drive her off stage at the Bob Dylan tribute concert, who
attempted suicide last September, who checked into a rehab clinic last month to
deal with her dependency on marijuana - letting her inner child have its day in
the recording studio.

   Which may make this album sound more intriguing than it actually is. The
problem with "Universal Mother" is not that it's a pained, Tori Amos-come-lately
confessional, but that it's so tepid musically. It's difficult to understand how
O'Connor or her record label ever imagined these undercooked songs were fit for
public consumption.

   "Universal Mother" goes wrong in so many ways it's hard to know where to
begin. So let's begin at the beginning, with the excerpt from a speech by author
Germaine Greer that opens the album.

   Greer offers some remarks about radically altering our male-dominated society
by restoring lost matriarchal values. No matter what you think of Greer's
thoughts, in this context they sound a warning: her admirer O'Connor is more
interested in delivering a manifesto than in music.

   And then, to a hiphop beat and a sample of Miles Davis' trumpet, O'Connor
turns around and exposes the dark side of motherhood. She unleashes "Fire in
Babylon," a lament about the physical and psychological battering she endured
from her own mother, Marie (who died in a car crash in 1985). O'Connor delivers
the rather monotonous tune in a voice that sounds thinner than ever before. But
at least there's an undercurrent of energy, something that is in short supply on
the rest of "Universal Mother."

   The mood changes drastically with "John I Love You," a nursery rhyme-like
expression of mother love. This plodding waltz segues into "My Darling Child," a
wispy bit of piffle featuring backing by a string orchestra and the sentimental
piano work of Phil Coulter. When this is followed by a poem written and recited
by O'Connor's 7-year-old son, Jake, it's clear the former shaved-head firebrand
has turned soft - or soft-headed.

   But O'Connor does show occasional flashes of her old intensity. Accompanied
by little more than the stiff new age piano of Coulter - a middle-of-the-road
Irish musician so square he makes George Winston sound like Professor Longhair -
O'Connor eloquently stands up against physical abuse in "Red Football" ("I'm not
no red football to be kicked around the garden)."

   And her voice-and-acoustic guitar version of Kurt Cobain's "All Apologies"
reverberates with chilling undercurrents in light of her barely thwarted (by
friend Peter Gabriel) attempt at killing herself by overdosing on sleeping
pills.

   But whatever sparks these somber tunes are quickly dampened. O'Connor slogs
onward with a series of pallid piano-and-voice and voice-only tunes that
reinforce the prevailing torpor of "Universal Mother."

   It comes as a shock when, on the next to last cut, O'Connor suddenly reverts
to form. She plugs in the electricity, brings back some more Miles Davis trumpet
floating above a snakey hip hop beat and dishes out "Famine," a pointed rap
about England's criminal role in the Irish famine of 1847.

   With its irresistible "Eleanor Rigby" hook, "Famine" is full of the sort of
ear-catching eccentricity that first endeared O'Connor to an international pop
audience. It has all the anguish and anger of "Universal Mother," and exactly
what's so sorely missed too: exciting music.