The Times
September 17, 1994, Saturday

David Sinclair


   SINEAD O'CONNOR

   Universal Mother

   Ensign 8 30549*

   THE tendency for pop stars to parade their socially maladjusted backgrounds
as a validation of their art may have reached its apogee with the American
grunge bands, but Sinead O'Connor was way ahead of the game. Having chronicled
the misery of her own dysfunctional family life for many years, she casts the
net much wider on Universal Mother, embracing the distress of her entire island
nation ''I see the IrishAs a race like a childThat got itself bashed in the
face'' and indeed, on ''All Babies'', the pain of each individual the whole
world over.

    Her singing ranges from a little-girl-lost whisper, as on a pecularly
affecting version of Kurt Cobain's ''All Apologies'', to the tortured wail of
''Fire On Babylon''.

    But her best shot on this rather exhausting collection is ''Famine'', a rap
on the unpromising subject of the Irish potato famine of 1845-47 intercut with
snatches from the chorus of the Beatles' ''Eleanor Rigby''. ''We're suffering
from post-traumatic stress disorder,'' she proclaims against a grumbling hip-hop
bass riff.

    Well, it is one way of breaking free of the old moonJune routine.