Vanguard
Folk Music, 2002

Listening to Sinéad O’Connor is often an emotionally draining experience. This is because she is consistently, undeniably gifted; a distinctive vocalist that makes some of the best music around, and yet, her mental struggles also plays out in public to such a degree that it feels wrong, somehow, to find joy in the works of someone that was drowning inside while the music was being made.

Then again, maybe that’s why we are all here. The best creative geniuses are often the most troubled ones, and we are all voyeurs in a way to find pleasure in the works borne from their tormented psyches.

Sean-Nós Nua, an album featuring her interpretation of some of the better known traditional songs of Ireland, England, and, I guess… Canada? Peggy Gordon is a Nova Scotia folk song, right?

When other artists do such a thing, it may be viewed as an easy cash-in effort by someone that has run out of ideas. This is Ms O’Connor, though, so I get instead 13 songs—15 if one has the Japanese release of this album, and I don’t, hmmph—that run through every gamut of feels from safety to comfort to heartbreak to melancholy.

Now, I’m not an expert of Irish music, no matter how much I love it, so I can’t tell anyone just how well Ms O’Connor acquit herself with her performance of the sean-nós style of singing here. I do know that it sounds great to me, and honestly, it’s the kind of music I need to listen to soothe the nerves brought upon by the state of the world today.

I love her interpretation of The Parting Glass, which I admit is one of my favorite songs out there. The versions I have come across tend to turn that song into a rousing ballad or an anthem done in the style of blokes raising their beer while half-drunk yet singing on key. Here, a cheerful refrain of the melody plays as dear Ms O’Connor starts out piping the first few lines calmly, almost stoically, only to slowly serve a gamut of feels using the subtle nuances found in her enunciation and intonation of every word. I feel like I can hear her wistful longing during Her rosy cheeks and ruby lips, and there is a slight, almost inaudible catch during But since it falls unto my lot, that I should rise and you should not that made my own breath catch for a second. The transition of the song from a simple celebration of a goodbye to somber melancholy when one realizes the inevitability of the parting… that is so beautifully done here, heartbreaking and cathartic all at once.

The other songs here are similarly evocative. While one can rightfully argue that there may be nothing particularly inventive about the arrangement of the songs themselves, the vocal performance is sublime. This is the decisive factor that transforms the experience of playing this album from merely listening to music to experiencing it.

Sean-Nós Nua is not something one plays when one is in the mood for some uptempo bops, as the overall tone of the album is best described as “deep feels”. Still, fans of European folk music may want to give this a try.