THE DAILY TELEGRAPH 
June 17, 2000

By David Cheal 

Sinead O'Connor 
Faith and Courage 
(Atlantic) 

IT'S BEEN a busy time for Sinead O'Connor. Recently
she announced that she is a lesbian, having previously
been "ordained" as a priest, and now she's releasing
her first proper album since 1994's Universal Mother. 

Lyrically, Faith and Courage is an Irish stew of ideas
and ideologies: there's confession, exculpation,
forgiveness, Catholicism, ecumenicalism and
Rastafarianism. Fortunately, most of the music is
nothing like as solemn as all this would suggest,
thanks partly to some melodic writing contributions
from O'Connor herself and from Dave Stewart, and also
to the starry line-up of musicians and producers - Jah
Wobble, Adrian Sherwood, Skip McDonald, Brian Eno,
Wyclef Jean, and Stewart again. 

The result is an album that, even during its dreariest
moments - notably The Lamb's Book of Life - usually
has something interesting going on. It helps, too,
that O'Connor seems to have largely exorcised the
dysfunctional spirit that infected much of her
previous output and replaced it with a more positive
mood. 

Her chart-topping days may be all part of a previous
life, but at least she sounds as if she's having fun
again.