The Toronto Star
May 16, 1990, Wednesday, FINAL EDITION

O'Connor's music shines

By Mitch Potter Toronto Star


   With an ivory-white cotton veil circling a halo around her bristly bald pate,
Irish pop siren Sinead O'Connor stood in the eye of a pop culture hurricane last
night at Massey Hall.

   She met her hype - a wildly enthusiastic capacity crowd that underscored her
meteoric ascension to pop's mainstream from the nethers of hip alternative -
with a performance that was every bit as enigmatic as her voice itself.

   Alternately childlike, strident, ruminative, fierce, folky, funky, even
avant-garde, O'Connor turned her steely blue eyes and elastic vocals on a show
steeped in translucent, compelling emotion.

   O'Connor gave a show that was no one thing for more than mere moments; she
did it without a word of acknowledgement to the wildly partisan crowd, some of
whom reportedly paid as much as $500 for scalped seats.

   At 23, and with only two albums to draw upon (1987's The Lion And The Cobra
and the current I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got), O'Connor faces the daunting
expectations that come with superstardom on this current tour. And while the
tightly arranged set may lack immediate focus, it subtly and elegantly details
the emotional chord she strikes with a remarkably diverse audience.

   From song to song and style to style, the emotion of her music shines like
light through frosted glass - the impact was there always, but the source never
quite visible.

   Backed by a tight, unobtrusive five-piece group, O'Connor punctuated her
vocals - which often begin a word in hushed, childlike whisper and end in a
raging squall - with body language that alternately pogoed, swooned and flailed,
depending on the mood of a given song.

   She made it ring out with hymnal grace in the opening song, "Feel So
Different" (a song that documents both her last two years of search for
spiritual atonement), only to transmute to the pogoing, sensual funk/dance of "I
Want Your (Hands On Me)".

   Sinead then took up 12-string guitar for a triplet of acoustic folk musings,
including "Three Babies", with its halting, plaintive vocals, and "Black Boys On
Mopeds", a modern folk screed that targets Margaret Thatcher's England.

   A reel-to-reel tape deck was placed next to the singer for the set's most
unusual experiment, a live reading of odd Celtic-funk, "I Am Stretched On Your
Grave", a song that sets O'Connor's traditional Irish folk melody atop a
polyrhythmic James Brown rhythm sample.

   The bizarre fusion - dance fans can move to it, folkies can tap toe to it -
is a clue, perhaps, to the singer's wide, wondrous reach.

   O'Connor followed the song with a pleasantly rearranged version of "The Last
Day Of Our Acquaintance", beginning first on solo guitar then segueing abruptly
to a full band rock rhythm. The song, a message to a wandering lover, is
anchored by the snarled lines: "Two years ago the seed was planted/ Since then
you have taken me for granted."

   O'Connor wound down with "Nothing Compares 2 U", the sparely arranged Prince
ballad that gave her a No. 1 song.