The Boston Globe
August 15, 1990, Wednesday, City Edition

Sinead O'Connor breathes fire;
MUSIC REVIEW SINEAD O'CONNOR At: Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts with
O Positive and the Immortals, last night, through tonight.

By Jim Sullivan, Globe Staff


   The last time Sinead O'Connor hit town, in May at the Orpheum, her star was
rapidly ascending, and she took the stage with a force rarely glimpsed. Shrouded
in red, she belted out "Feel So Different, an "Eleanor Rigby" sort of ballad
that rolled calm, tension, synth-strings and breathtaking vocal and emotional
leaps into one short song. A multiple-crescendo, mini-concert of its own. That
happened last night, too, at the sold-out Great Woods, and aside from a murky
mix it was pretty much the same tour de force - granted, the effect is a trifle
less the second time seen.

   For this critic, the show-stopper came midway through: "The Last Day of Our
Acquaintance." It's one of modern pop's best kiss-off songs to begin with; last
night, O'Connor and her five-piece band took it over the edge into the
stratosphere of gorgeous spite. How spiteful? She asked the women to sing along,
admitting only Steve Fagnoli (an in-reference, he's her manager) into the
sing-along "because he has a beautiful ex-girlfriend he can sing it to." Then,
O'Connor, accompanied at first by reel-to-reel tape deck and acoustic guitar
launched into the song. She interjected two key curses that brought home the
fierceness.  Guitarist Marco Pirroni (ex Adam and the Ants) leant a terse,
bitter coda - another M-80 on the stack of dynamite.

   If you want to read something into it, go ahead. She was rumored to be having
an affair with former opener Hugh Harris, no longer on the tour, thank you very
much. She's rumored to be pregnant by him - and dressed in a body-clinging
unitard she did look a bit swollen. But the particulars of her personal life
don't really matter when it comes to her art. What counts is the ferocity, the
utter belief in the sentiment. And, out there in the audience, you're thinking,
"No, I do not want to get in the path of this diminutive dynamo." She can
breathe fire. And a lot more. Add spirituality and sexuality. Consider new wave
rockers like "Jump In the Fire," soft-stinging pop melancholia like Prince's
"Nothing Compares To U," a mutated Irish step-dance in "I Am Stretched On Your
Grave" and an a cappella close of Irish folk-singer Mary Black's towering
dead-lover ballad "Anarchie Gordon," and you've got a mind-spinning package of
smarts, sophistication and sexuality.

   O'Connor put that together throughout her 75-minute show last night, the
first of two. It makes her, at the very least, a thinking person's Madonna - her
curses mean more, her body-grabbing means more, her voice is beyond compare, and
she's attained a similar mainstream/hip cachet. At the most, of course, it makes
her one of the very top young artists of the 1990s and there was nothing about
last night's performance to dissuade us from that latter point. On NBC
television, meanwhile, Maria Shriver was delivering an O'Connor
feature-interview that our field correspondent reported was "triple-A Barbara
Walters, dumber than dustbunnies." Such is the price of superstardom in this
USA.

   Another price: the yelling that dumbo fans do whenever there's a trenchant
pause in a soft song. "My, my," the village idiot, thinks, "a space, a place for
me to add to the mystical, magic mood by yelling 'YAAAHHHH!" O'Connor, who may
be getting accustomed to this by now, nonetheless bade us silence during
"Anarchie," explaining it was a long song and she'd step back at the conclusion
to signify the proper scream time. To her and her audience's credit, about 80
percent of the cretin factor followed her wishes.

   A sense of clashing informs most of her material - from the racial clash of
"Black Boys on Mopeds" to the romantic clashes in "The Emperor's New Clothes"
(and many others). "Black Boys .." is sad, haunting; "Emperor ..." is defiant,
cocky. O'Connor's mastery is such that she can jerk these emotions with ease.
You never wish for a fast rave-up when she's chest-deep in a somber ballad; you
never hope for an a cappella story-song when she's jumping about and rocking.
And, you always know, at some level she feels like she's been betrayed, but will
nonetheless triumph over that betrayal. You want to talk universality? Try that
one.

   Two Boston bands, O Positive and the Immortals, filled in for the departed
Harris and World Party. O Positive wove a dreamy, Cure-like pop spell, nicely
spiked by guest Pete Rhee's violin at times and Dave Martin's guitar.
Singer-guitarist Dave Herlihy kept it anchored and emotionally centered. A nice
mix of fringe and mainstream pop. A travel conflict kept me from making the
Immortals set. I have, however, heard them in the past, reckon they've learned
their Van Morrison very well indeed (I mean that in the best way) and suggest
you catch them tonight if you can.