Sean-Nos Nua

Description

.com Sinéad O'Connor's first studio record since 2000's Faith and Courage takes her far into her Irish heritage with 13 traditional songs dusted off and set to new arrangements. Accompanied by stellar Irish and English-based musicians such as Donal Lunny (guitar, bouzouki, keyboard, bodhran, bodhran bass) and vocalist Christy Moore, O'Connor, who also coproduced, casts a hypnotic spell, making the old songs resonate with pulsing rhythms and sounds. Such contemporary treatment takes nothing away from the austere splendor of the material--in fact, this often seems a mystical recording just recovered from some ancient vault. Whether pining over unrequited love ("Peggy Gordon") or bemoaning the plight of a soldier who fled the Irish wars, only to be conscripted under Abraham Lincoln in the War Between the States ("Paddy's Lament"), O'Connor delivers an intimate and thoroughly mature performance, her whispered voice occasionally giving way to a primal scream. Melancholy to the core and astonishingly beautiful. --Alanna Nash