The Toronto Star March 23, 1990, Friday, FINAL EDITION Spiritual Sinead bristles with contradictions By Chris Dafoe and Mitch Potter Toronto Star * Sinead O'Connor I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (Chrysalis/MCA): Angry and loving, passionately protective and coldly vengeful, daringly blasphemous and deeply spiritual, naive and wise, Sinead O'Connor's second album is a marvel of contradiction, a complex exploration of love and devotion of all kinds: romantic, religious, parental. Backed by sounds that runs from grungy, primitive guitar riffs (on "Jump in The River" it sounds like someone stuck a large boot through the speaker) to Celtic fiddling and chillingly lush strings, O'Connor sings of her children, her God, her lovers, even her career in a voice that can turn from vicious caw to thrushlike trill in a few bars. It's not simply that O'Connor has a marvelous voice - she does - but that she uses it with such incredible conviction that it seems almost impossible not to be swayed, no matter what she's singing about. On "Black Boys and Mopeds", for example, she announces her intention to take her son away because, "England's not the mythical land of Madame George and Roses / It's the home of the police who kill black boys on mopeds." The reference to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks aside - is O'Connor in his class? Maybe. - the line drips with such intense feeling that one suspects if the song was played on the radio (and it won't be) mothers across the green and pleasant land would begin planning to follow suite. It is a voice - and these are songs - of one who believes that happiness is elusive and difficult, that true love should defy logic, even border on madness (which come to think of it, describes faith quite nicely.) It's a voice, even, that is young and naive enough to believe a simple disposable commodity like a pop record can mean a great deal. It's a silly idea, of course, but I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got makes it entirely believable.