 Sinéad O'Connor If I had to pick an album from the past 10 years that has been most unfairly maligned, it would have to be Sinéad O'Connor's big band album, Am I Not Your Girl? Released at the height of her public image as a total loon, it was actually a pretty damn bold move considering how much in the spotlight she was, and how much of a departure it is from here first two albums. More surprising than the fact that she did it at all is the fact that it's a really good album, perfectly solid and not laughable at all. Sinéad sings with the same passion and intensity that she pours into her own songs, and finds some emotional shades in these old standards that not many singers had before. In particular, "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" stands out as an amazing performance – a song so fully associated with Ella Fitzgerald that you expect it to be super lame, but it's a very spellbinding six-plus minutes wherein she takes it into a much more intimate space. Her singing is so fully real that you don't even question lines like "With no Bromo Seltzer handy/I don't even shake." She really is a great artist to have pulled this album off as well as she did. The singles, "Success Has Made a Failure of Our Home" (originally sung by Loretta Lynn) and "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" (from Evita) are definitive – "Success" in particular is such a radical reimagining of the original that it makes the more straightforward arrangements on the album seem a bit less satisfying. Imagine if the whole album had sustained that level of rich imagination and total intensity of performance. It's truly a spine-chilling performance. Another great moment that nobody ever talks about is the version of "How Insensitive" (Astrud Gilberto by way of Frank Sinatra) – Sinéad really makes this one breathe. Her talent for mining the emotional depth of a song is as peerless as her knack for getting people to mock her. Everyone says that Sinatra was the master of emotion in song, but to me he always sounds so calculated. I never question Sinéad for a moment, even in the moments when I'm confused as to why she's doing something in the first place. Much of the album is simply tasteful big band stuff like a Harry Connick, Jr. record: "Love Letters," "Gloomy Sunday," "I Want to Be Loved by You," "Secret Love." The arrangements are all interesting, but there are a lot of moments that are essentially pretty filler. This probably would have made a better EP, or perhaps a double album, where you couldn't really question her commitment. The Irish "Scarlet Ribbons" moves things into a new area, followed by the somewhat hilarious intrumental lounge-vamp of "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" – overall there is something of a schizophrenia to the whole endeavor, but it's more or less medicated, at least until the hidden track of Sinéad declaring war on the Holy Roman Empire comes on to close things out in the loony bin. Personally, I think it's about time that someone tackled the Holy Roman Empire, because the way people keep talking about the Hohenstaufens does get oppressive in day to day life. "Hohenstaufens this, Hohenstaufens that," it's all anyone ever talks about. They'll never take away my faith in Charlemagne, no matter how hard they try to brainwash me. Also, the very intense and personal liner notes are at odds with the intent behind the record, which is really just to pay tribute to the songs that made her want to be a singer. So it's a conflicted album, but not one that can be as easily dismissed as most critics would have you believe.
Review by Tammy Whynot |