St. Petersburg Times April 9, 1990, Monday, City Edition Sinead O'Connor takes a break Second album shows a rebel with a pause J.D. CONSIDINE First impressions aren't everything, no matter what they say in shampoo commercials. Take Sinead O'Connor, for instance. At first glance, this young Irishwoman seemed a rebel and a hellion, a second-generation punk rocker with no hair on her head and a large chip on her shoulder. Although a certain amount of O'Connor's bad reputation stemmed from her decidedly unorthodox appearance ("Nice girls don't shave their heads," seemed the general consensus), her brash behavior and don't-waste-my-time attitude toward interviewers did little to soften the impression. It was her music, however, that made the deepest impression. For all the waiflike delicacy of her voice in her debut, The Lion and the Cobra, what came through most clearly in these songs was the angry passion of their author. Throughout, the album conveyed an almost indomitable willfulness, from the ghostly narrator of Jackie, who stubbornly refused to accept the fact that her lover would never return, to the imperious desire of I Want Your (Hands On Me). Here, the music seemed to be saying, was a woman who would not be trifled with, who would never accept anything she didn't want without a fight. Imagine the shock, then, when fans expecting more of the same an additional dose of the same unrepentant intensity that marked The Lion and the Cobra first hear I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (Chrysalis 21759), O'Connor's long-awaited second album. Instead of starting off with a snarl, I Do Not Want . begins with a prayer, and a telling one at that. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change," she intones over the ominous thrum of violins, "courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." It's the prayer for serenity, an entreaty traditionally offered by the angry and impatient in hopes of quenching those fires (not for nothing was it adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous). In some ways, in fact, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got is itself a prayer for serenity, for it seems to chronicle the singer's own attempts to tame the passions that burn within her. Certainly, the subject matter here abject alienation (Feel So Different), absolute disdain (The Emperor's New Clothes), desperate love (Nothing Compares 2 U) suggests another setting loose of the furies, but that's only if you ignore the music. Factor that in, and what seems most astonishing about this album isn't its sublimated rage, but its quiet beauty. What prompted this transformation? In recent interviews O'Connor has mentioned both motherhood and maturity as probable culprits, adding that a lot can happen between age 20 (when she recorded The Lion and the Cobra) and 23 (now). Stylistically, O'Connor is paying tribute to sean nos singing, an Irish a cappella ballad form that not only forces her to strip the song to its melodic essence, but also grants it the weight and authority of tradition. And it's the power of that sound, more than the artful evasion of the lyrics' imagery, that ultimately carries the song. O'Connor makes less explicit allusions to this expressively ascetic style elsewhere on the album. Still, the album's most striking transformation isn't a matter of formal innovation so much as inspired interpretation. Nothing Compares 2 U, the album's first single, is a version of a Prince song that had originally been recorded by the Family (a Paisley Park satellite band that featured Prince's current saxophonist, the sister of his old guitarist and two former members of the Time). There's no comparison between the two versions. What we hear in her husky voice and broken falsetto is not the cliched comfort of R&B platitudes, but raw emotion. Which is why her version moves us in a way the Family's never could. Yet as different as the single's sound is, that unflinching devotion to honesty remains unchanged from O'Connor's debut. So maybe there is something to that first impressions business anyway provided, of course, you know where to look.