The Irish Times September 17, 1994, CITY EDITION Sinead's new offering gets mixed reviews By ROBERT O'BYRNE SOONER or later, critics will undoubtedly unite in their assessment of Sinead O'Connor's contribution to music of the 1980s and 90s. But for the moment, they appear to be totally at sea. Not that anyone is likely to agree on the effectiveness of the singer's public persona. The voluminous exchange of correspondence after the publication of her page-long poem in The Irish Times last year showed that she provokes the range of responses from virulent hostility to tender compassion. Although Ms O'Connor has continually pleaded for privacy, she seems incapable of avoiding public exposure. Last month, for example, she gave an interview to Q magazine (publicised as her last-ever interview, although there's about as much chance of that being her last as of Frank Sinatra actually sticking to his word and giving the world his last farewell concert). In this particular interview, Sinead is quoted as saying that she was "dying of grief" because her brother Joe and father John had broken off all communication with her "the loss of them has been unbearable to me." A few weeks ago, she was back in the headlines after being reported to have checked herself into the Pounds 350-a-day Priory psychiatric hospital in Putney, well-known for treating celebrity patients for problems related to fame and all that follows in its wake. These two revelations can hardly be called discreet. Alas, after reading some of the early notices this week for her new album Universal Mother (follow-up to the ill-received Am I Not Your Girl? which seems to have prompted a resounding No! from the public) she may require further assistance from the environs of Putney. Sinead O'Connor, the musician, attracts as mixed a response as does the woman. "A self-pityingly patronising piece of work" was the opening shot of the London The Independent's review on Thursday. Its critic refers to the "frankly nauseating sentimentality" of one particular song - My Darling Child which yesterday's Guardian, in total contrast, describes as "a tranquil, violin-brushed lullaby Generally, her cover version of Nirvana's All Apologies has been most sympathetically received, while Am I a Human? written, performed and, we're told, even produced by Sinead O'Connor's young son Jake has got the universal thumbs down. The only thing in its favour is that the track in question is a mere 20 seconds long. "This album is a personal watershed," says one review and evidently the emphasis should be put on the word personal. For starters, the album's opening track Fire On Babylon sounds like a fresh assault on Sinead O'Connor's deceased mother ("She took my father from my life/Took my sister and brothers") and the last song is called Thank You for Hearing Me Now. In between come such extraordinary numbers as a spoken reverie on the Famine and Tiny Grief Song, which offers further exploration of Ms O'Connor's feelings towards her mother. Is all this just "another indigestible lump of her personal traumas" as the London Independent claims or is it an act of catharsis for performer and listener alike? That, it would appear, depends upon how you choose to respond to Sinead O'Connor the woman because, whether music reviewers like it or not she refuses to separate her creative life from her personal life, despite her best intentions. Rather like the interviews she will no longer be giving (at least until the next time she has something to share with the rest of the planet) the songs of Universal Mother turn out to be a kind of extended therapy session, says one reviewer. Maybe it would have been better if she had stuck to one of her earlier pronouncements and abandoned popular music to study opera. After all, no music critic ever assaults Pavarotti over his personal life.