The San Diego Union-Tribune
May 30, 1990, Wednesday

Robert J. Hawkins; Tribune Entertainment Writer


   Is Irish singer Sinead O'Connor really an artist freighted with deep meaning
that requires translation, or is she just an excellent singer with quirky ways?
Let's add to the 13-car pileup of symbolism that is O'Connor, shall we?

   What do we know about her so far?

   She is quite serious.  And quite a serious person.  She is annoyed with
people attempting to attach significance to her every action and fashion
selection.  Sometimes a shaved head is just a shaved head.

   (She is also annoyed at the local radio station that held a lame contest to
uncover O'Connor's hotel during her stay here.  But that is another story.)

   The shaved head didn't mean anything, a couple of years ago.  Just as the
slight boot-camp bristle means nothing now, really.

   Refusing to perform on "Saturday Night Live" with Andrew Dice Clay as host
meant nothing.  Though many people, self included, apparently misconstrued it as
an act of integrity.

   O'Connor strikes me as a person who spends much time -- perhaps too much time
-- stomping out the hype-fueled brush fires that surround the growing cult of
personality that is Sinead O'Connor.

   But, then, it must get annoying.  We pore over her every movement, like runes
in a temple, seeking the importance, social relevance and future implications of
each.  It is difficult to place her in the category of Just Another Singer.

   For if that were so, then she wouldn't have been performing for 4,000 last
night at the SDSU Open Air Theatre.  She would be in some small pub somewhere.

   But she is far from an ordinary singer, and far from an ordinary lyricist.
 She's just a difficult person to get to know.  That's all.

   Even before the curtain parted, Sinead O'Connor's most ardent fans had packed
up against the foot of the stage. The thick cluster of people added weight to
the recent declaration of O'Connor as the First Superstar of the 1990s -- a
dubious achievement given the rampant inflation of the term "superstar" in the
current socially inflationary times.

   Beyond the curtains, we got a performance that was by turns spastic,
intriguing, quirky, mesmerizing and virtuosic.  There is no voice out there
quite like Sinead O'Connor's.

   Like Tracy Chapman the night before, O'Connor employed a solid band that was
grossly underemployed.  Both women are superb soloists.

   Standing at stage center, almost enveloped by a gangly leather jacket,
O'Connor launched into "Feel So Different," an exploration of the changing
dynamics of friendship with a "superstar."

   She used the most curious gestures -- at a given moment flapping her arms as
if flying, then swimming, then slapping the air, bouncing on her toes.
 They seemed eccentric and irrelevant to the song, but wholely necessary to the
image.

   And so it went through many songs, unsubstantiated quirkiness juxtaposed to
songs that would chew your heart up.  There was even a bit of Madonna-esque
raunch on "Put 'Em on Me."

   As "Three Babies" began, O'Connor walked in circles around the stage floor,
singing into a thin wire headset.  Curious.  The circling, I mean.
 Nervousness?

   If so, the performance gathered strength through the politically charged
"Black Boys on Mopeds," "Jackie," and the remorse-filled "I Am Stretched Out on
Your Grave." For the last one, she also rolled out the tape machine for all to
see as the band took a quick break.

   As with Chapman the night before, it was unaccompanied material that gave
O'Connor her brightest moments, "Last Days of Our Acquaintance" for example.

   While "Nothing Compares 2 U" suffers from video overexposure, the live
version stunned a fairly boisterous crowd into silence.

   O'Connor's set was fairly short, less than a dozen numbers plus two encores
-- but quality more than made up for quantity.  Too much cannot be made of
O'Connor's voice.  It is a tool that has not yet found its maximum prowess, and
yet it is the most enchanting and embracing on radio these days.

   She ended with the lengthy "Troy" and an even lengthier a cappella version of
an old Irish romantic ballad -- a tragic tale, of course, being Irish.

   Tragedy is what colors O'Connor's voice, as relevance colors her lyrics and
eccentricity colors her movements. No wonder she is being championed as a
superstar.  It is an unsurpassed combination.

   Some day, when O'Connor decides just what it is she wants to be, her power as
an entertainer will treble and the word "superstar" will be an inadequate vessel
to hold her.

   Opening for O'Connor was Hugh Harris, a newcomer to America but a "living
legend" in England.  Well, that's like "superstar," I suppose: overused and
underfunded.

   Another intriguing lyricist, Harris must learn to lead his band rather than
let it lead him.  There were several musical ideas being formulated
simultaneously on a few of his songs.  And each seemed to head off in different
directions.

   Much of the music comes from Harris' Capitol Records debut, Words for Our
Years, which shows him with a fertile imagination.  Now if he could work on that
stage personality ...