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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
3.5 Stars... Two-fer album is ambitious and sprawling, March 3, 2008
In 2005 Sinead O'Connor came roaring back (as if she really ever was gone!) with the outstanding all-out reggae album "Throw Down Your Arms", which was one of the best albums of the year for me. As it turns out, it was regretfully only a one-time diversion, as Sinead went on her merry way after that to the next project.
"Theology" (2 CDs, 22 tracks, 91 min.) essentially brings a two-fer album. On CD1 "Dublin Sessions" (11 tracks, 41 min.) Sinead O'Connor brings all of the songs in an intimate setting, just acoustic guitar and vocals. One might almost be tempted to say those are the demos from which CD2 would come, but that's doing injustice to the intimate songs of CD1. The best song for me on CD1 is "Rivers of Babylon", one of the few traditional songs (arranged by Sinead), and almost unrecognisably so, but very beautifully. I rate the first CD 4 stars. On CD2 "London Sessions" (11 tracks, 50 min.). the same songs (but in a slightly different running order) are brought with a full band, and some songs are better than others. I liked the very different sounding "We People Who Are Darker Than Blue" (with drum machine, no less), as well as "Whomsoever Dwells" with the long intsrumental intro. CD2 has an extra song, a truly dreadful cover of "I Don't Know How to Love Him", what was Sinead thinking on this one? I rate the second CD 3 stars.
In all, "Theology" is ambitious and sprawling (not unlike Sinead's earlier "She Who Dwells" double album), but there is no denying the beautiful voice that Sinead continues to showcase. From that angle, CD1 works better for me than CD2. I had the good fortune of catching Sinead on tour last Fall in Chicago in support of this album, and it being my first time seeing her live, I enjoyed it from start to finish. She played a number of songs from "Theology", but also a number of her classics including of course "Nothing Compares to U". An unforgettable evening of music!
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60 of 77 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow, I Was Wrong: This Album is Truly Awful, June 26, 2007
Confession: as an ardent fan of O'Connor's musical genius since her international breakthrough in 1987 with "The Lion & the Cobra," each successive release over the years has been highly anticipated, no matter what media battles and so-called controversies the artist herself may have been fighting (or instigating) at any given time.
Indeed, the fact that O'Connor was able to maintain a global fan-base of millions over a 20-year period has been amazing to note, given her stated disdain for being a pop-star and her attempts (whether conscious or not) to sabotage her great fame. But there are good reasons why she retained a fiercely loyal following, sold 20 million albums, and enjoyed the deep respect of her peers for two decades.
Namely, her brilliant, otherworldly voice and emotive excellence has been a constant "thread" throughout virtually all of her many endeavors. Her fusion of hip-hop, Celtic, reggae, trip-hop, and rock influences (via her songwriting and arranging) was the pioneering icing on the cake. Whether she was singing about universal motherhood or black boys on mopeds, O'Connor transcended her public controversies in the studio and used That Voice and That Vision to make truly alternative records on her own and with dozens of high-profile collaborators. O'Connor has earned her mythic rock status.
But not with this album.
I bought "Theology" with the usual anticipation on the day it was released. What was not to anticipate? O'Connor singing spiritual music! Excellent. Writing her own songs again! Ideal. DOUBLE album! Woo-hoo. I played it and forced myself to like it, but after two weeks (and then a last, third week of hope), it was--shockingly!--booted out of my mp3 devices, home system, etc.
The album is really bad, and there are reasons for its badness that many O'Connor fans should have seen coming, and which merit explanations.
For one thing, O'Connor has veered away from any sort of healthy label support in the past 6 years. This is not necessarily a bad thing; O'Connor's long-term, steady success has enabled her to fund her own recordings. To escape the demands of crap-pop major labels is legit--she claimed that such labels would never allow her to make the music she really wants to make.
But that claim has been ingenuous. Many sturdy, semi-major labels (Nonesuch, Nettwerk, etc.) would likely be thrilled not only to boast O'Connor on their rosters, but offer her the much-needed support and direction that comes from a worthy production team, along with marketing strategies that are calibrated for her specific needs and audience.
O'Connor is to be admired for recording acclaimed albums of grooved-out Celtic trads and die-hard reggae roots tunes all on her very own since 2002. She's even more to be admired for attaching herself (over 20 years, but most recently) to excellent producers and collaborators like Moby, Massive Attack, Rhys Fulber (of Conjure One), Daniel Lanois, and DJs Tiesto, Creamer & K, Push, etc. These ventures, in particular, have resulted in some of her most widely appreciated work: the "Troy" and "Tears from the Moon" remixes were international hits for O'Connor, introducing the diva to new fans, as was her successful Massive Attack venture.
But these instances of strength-of-production and direction have only underscored a disturbing trend apparent in her two most recent solo albums, inlcuding "Theology": O'Connor's vocal instrument has been severely damaged by cigarette-smoking and her judgment in songwriting and self-production has hit a frightful skid.
Her 2005 reggae album (Throw Down Your Arms) was redeemed by a hard-core adherence and obvious devotion to good spiritual roots songs produced (perfectly) by legends Sly & Robbie. But the O'Connor voice was unsettlingly awry. In one UK interview about the making of the album, O'Connor herself joked ominously about how her chain-smoking might affect her sessions, but she kept on chain-smoking (among other "smokings"), all the same.
It's one thing for a singer to hit a speed-bump with lame material, but quite another for a singer whose entire artistic calling-card has been one of the most pure, pristine, ethereal voices in modern music to have such cavalier disregard for (and indeed to outright destroy) her greatest musical gift. In O'Connor's case, this calls her very artistic integrity into question: how are her listeners to believe in such serious music when the singer herself apparently no longer believes (or cares) about the value and basic health of her own voice--the voice that communicates her creativity?
This brings us (yes, at last) to the "Theology" mess. This ill-conceived album epitomizes the ruination of everything brilliant that she once was, and it hints at what precious little may remain of O'Connor as a top-flight musical artist.
To begin, O'Connor funded the album herself (which is lovely, but if one of her caliber is going to do so, why not do it properly?). Her stated goal was delineate (for herself? for her audience? for the world?) her own view of spirituality, which usually masquerades as 'theology' in the wider world. To this end, she did not really "write" brand new songs, as promoters for this record stated. She did not offer something new or innovative in terms of recording a personal spiritual document that might have accessibility and focus for a wide spectrum of listeners, like similar works in the past by peers like Dylan, Cash, and Morrison.
Instead, O'Connor lazily cobbled together verses cribbed from some of the more generic, benign portions of the Old Testament Psalms and set them to lackluster melodies, pedestrian arrangements, and (in the case of Disc 2, "London Sessions") to cheap and amateurish beats and production values. Worse, her voice is (comparative to her former heights) atrocious on virtually every track.
The evidence of cigarette-damage is so pronounced that one can hear her missing beats for failure to breathe in time, she is huffing and puffing through songs, and utilizing shameless phrasing "tricks" to mask even minor stylisms she once owned but which are now wholly inadequate. Most glaring of all, O'Connor's bell-clear alto, with all of its rich, keening, archangelic effect, has been obliterated. She is singing exlcusively here in a lower register, which is bracing, and she is singing poorly.
Adding insult to injury, O'Connor has recorded most of the same songs on this unfortunate album twice. Disc One, the "Dublin Side," features O'Connor rasping and croaking with too much reverb (again to mask the ruined larynx), her own ridiculously out-of-tune guitar, and the solid guitar accompaniment of Steve Cooney to mask O'Connor's deficiencies.
The songs here have a reverent, contemplative impact, but they are unremarkable melodically and in terms of structure. The Old Testament words co-opted are obviously worthy, but they do not offer any unique personal "theology"--they offer a specifically Old Testament patriarchal ancient Jewish theology. Which would be fine, if O'Connor had called the album "Old Testament Patriarchal Jewish Theology" and not tried to sell this record in interviews and marketing as her own unique spiritual vision.
The songs are virtually all two-chord affairs, giving the effect of same-sounding dirges and portending the sad possibility that O'Connor was too lazy to get her old guitar skills back up-to-speed to add dimension or some melodic diversity to her Psalm interpretations. She may have been able to interject more actual "writing" of her own into the mix, had she done so.
On the Dublin Disc, a song like "Something Beautiful" tries to rise above the mediocrity, but the whole tune is a wandering mess that can't seem to decide whether it's a plaintive hymn justifying a personal moment of bookstore Bible-shoplifting...or a jarringly sudden and intrusive treatise on how God views the general scourge of War and feels neglected by the global community, replete with imagery of jewel-bedecked brides and wounded masses. The themes, again, seem cobbled and incongruous, making what is otherwise a sweet (but ho-hum) lullaby into a hackneyed ramble. The Disc 2 "full band" version of this song is a miasma of awful mixing, mastering, and arranging--with O'Connor's vocals also poorly mixed and processed to the nth degree of shrill. A bizarre and disatrous take on an already iffy song.
Her Dublin Side version of Curtis Mayfield's "We People Who Are Darker Than Blue" fares a little better because it's (at last!) a well-written song and O'Connor gives it an understated delivery that minimizes the breathlessness and cigarette-squawk evident on other tracks. Even so, the track bores on Disc 1 because it demands an inherently funkier treatment, and, in fact, gets one on Disc 2, which makes its rendition on Disc 1 ultimately obsolete and pointless.
O'Connor seeks to cram the bulk of her personal "theological insight" into the song "Out of the Depths," wherein she harps on (again, as in the past) that she wants to save God from religion and insitutional rules. All well and good, but the only people who are going to be (and have proven to be) attracted to this record in the first place are die-hard O'Connor fans, and they are all too familiar with this pet-obsession of the singer, no matter how noble it may be.
As it is, if O'Connor found new metaphors and more creative melodies in which to deliver this message, it might work. But "Out of the Depths" plods along with O'Connor again unforgivably out of breath, wobbling off her own bad-strumming, and hoarse as she offers a bland dirge that might just as well be sung by a stoned amateur soloist at some folk-Mass. The Disc 2...
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
what i know, July 12, 2007
Sinead's new album meets her goals...it gives me such a feeling of peace in this troubled world. I'm not the keenest on religiously-toned music even though i'm religious. Much of what is out there does not touch my heart. This album both touches my heart AND my soul. I feel so relaxed when I pop either disc into the player. I almost want to cry...out of sheer joy.
The spirituality is not in your face...and that's much of why it appeals to me so much. Her songs are gorgeous and so tender. Give it...and peace a chance.
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