LA Weekly June 30 Handed by Ana SINEAD O'CONNOR Faith and Courage (Atlantic) Sinead O'Connor wants you back. She's sorry about the whole misunderstanding with the "Star Spangled Banner," and she really regrets tearing up that snapshot of the pope on live TV. Mistress of the grand political gesture, the Irish singer has been apologizing for her refusal to remove her heart from her sleeve since 1994's Universal Mother. On her first full-length record in six years, she's still pleading for forgiveness and understanding. "I know that I have done many things/ To give you reason not to listen to me," she laments. "Words can't express how sory I am/ If I ever caused pain to anybody." In fact, the best of O'Connor's new material appears to be a direct response to her ever-tumultuous personal life. In the past three years, she's been ordained as a priest by a controversial Catholic splinter group; turned her friend Shane MacGowan in to the police for buying heroin; given birth to her sencond child and then endured a nasty custody battle. However, faced with such candor, not to mention the woman's formidable pipes, several big-name knob-twiddler's turn into shrinking violets. Almost every producer on Faith and Courage - Brian Eno, dub pioneer Adrian Sherwood, Eurythmic Dave Stewart, even Wyclef Jean- has AAA-ed O'Connor within an inch of her life. Listening to the blunt statement of independence in "No Man's Woman," or the unapologetic sexuality of "Daddy I'm Fine," a portrait of the rock star as a young egoist, you yearn for raw guitars, gritty beats or at least a broader dynamic range. The album's centerpiece, the reggae-Celtic synthesis "The Lamb's Book of Life," is disappointingly light on bass boom and heavy on pennywhistle lilt. More satisfying is the hushed Rasta-style take on the Kyrie eleison, which proves that gentle and meditative don't necassarily mean boring. The problem isn't really overproduction, since the record's transcendent moments are actually its most heavily manipulated: the heavily layered, haunting "Hold Back The Night"; the lush, brokenhearted and oddly exhilirating "The State I'm In" (written and produced by Ednaswap's Anne Preven and Scott Cutler). At least these tracks reveal a musical vision, however facile. In O'Connor's past work (with the exception of her ill-conceived standards album, Am I Not You Girl?) it's been impossible to seperate the singer from the song; she even mangaged to leave her mark on the work of such distinctive writers as Prince and Kurt Cobain. Faith and Courage, on the other hand, creates an insurmountable gap between her clarion voice and the sonic wallpaper behind it. (Jackie McCarthy)