How About I Be Me (and you be you)?
It's tempting to weigh the events of her personal life in listening to this album, especially when the opening song, "4th and Vine," is a deceptively jaunty tune about impending nuptials:
Gonna put my pink dress on
And do my hair up tight
I'm gonna put some eyeliner on
I'm gonna look real nice
I'm going down to the church
On 4th & Vine
I'm gonna marry my love
And we'll be happy for all time
That Sinead has no hair to put up, and that she had a well-publicized marriage in Las Vegas last year to a man she met on the Internet that was almost immediately annulled (according to her Web site, she is not back on a dating site) would seem to indicate that this song may be have a wink to it, or maybe it's just a fantasy. It was likely written before those events, so perhaps this is just the part of Sinead that likes to play Barbies and enact dream weddings. It's a great song, though.
The next cut is more harrowing. "Reason With Me" is told from the point of a view of a junkie and thief:
Hello, you don't know me,
but I stole your laptop
and I took your TV.
I sold your granny's rosary
for 50 p.
The song gets deep inside the troubled head of a person most of us would not give the time of day for, and includes perhaps the saddest line you'll likely to hear: "'Cause if I love someone, I might lose someone; if I love someone, I might lose someone."
As is her want, O'Connor also sprinkles religion through her music, as she does in the song "Take Off Your Shoes":
I bleed the blood of Jesus over you
And over every fucking thing you do
Seven times I bleed the blood of Jesus over you
Take off your shoes--you're on hallowed ground
The album ends with a spoken word section on how wisdom means nothing if we don't listen to the word of the lord. But the very last sound is laughter.
O'Connor's songwriting is very strong, but so is her voice, not dimmed by the years. In the album's best track, "The Queen of Denmark," written by John Grant, she uses the full range of her pipes to dazzle. Though she didn't write these lyrics, I'm sure she chose the song because it spoke to her, and it wasn't until I checked the liner notes that I learned it wasn't her words. Her vocals make them hers, though:
Don't know what to want from this world
I really don't know what to want from this world
I don't know what it is you wouldn't want from me
You have no right to want anything from me at all
Why don't you take it out on somebody else?
Why don't you tell somebody else that they're selfish?
Weepy coward and pathetic...
The last song on the record, "V.I.P.," may be the most personal, though it does strain into pretentiousness. The way she sings it, though, guarantees that it's heartfelt:
The artists always spoke their people's needs
Now we're gorged upon what devils feed
In the shallow form of MTV
Telling the youth to worship futile dreams
And alone for begging for material things
I tell you what a real VIP is
A face that never was nor will be kissed
To whom exactly are we givin' hope
When we stand behind the velvet rope
I'm thrilled that Sinead O'Connor is back on her game, and even bought tickets to her upcoming concert tour, where she will appear in Montclair, NJ in May. I'll report back then.
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