Gig review: Sinead O’Connor, Oran Mor, Glasgow

EVEN by Sinéad O’Connor’s never-a-dull-moment standards, the last few months have been chaotic for the Irish singer, whose tendency to let it all hang out in public has only been exacerbated by her incontinent use of social media to publicise her private travails.

That same emotional openness, coupled with courage in the face of hostility, has served her well musically and she has applied it as idiosyncratically as ever on her new album, How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?, an eclectic yet focused collection that serves as a reminder she did not build her artistic reputation on controversy alone.

She began this set gently enough with a trilogy of meditations on motherhood, working up to the relative kickback of Emperor’s New Clothes, although she unleashed more vocal power on a middle Eastern-flavoured mantra and the simple passion of Jealous.

O’Connor came backed by full band, who occasionally overpowered the emotional heart of the material.

Her strength, though, is her flexibility as an interpreter, that she can switch from the spellbinding intensity of an a capella rendition of I Am Stretched On Your Grave to the blithe ska chug of 4th and Vine without upsetting the equilibrium of the performance.

When it came, Nothing Compares 2 U was nicely understated and touching. She reserved her encore for the quiet fury of Take Off Your Shoes, her epic riposte to institutionalised child abuse, the less quiet fury of John Grant’s Queen Of Denmark, a new, gleefully vitriolic addition to her armoury of covers, and a free adaptation of a vespers prayer.

Rating: ***