Sinéad/Sigur Ros

This week was very intense and this Friday evening I felt quite worn out. So I felt like an 'easy listen' (already flouting my own principles!) and took a grab in a box that is drifting around in the living room with a mix of pop CDs and recently acquired classical stuff. My hand fell on Throw Down Your Arms, a double CD of Sinéad O'Connor. It's a CD that dropped in my collection via a CD exchange project that has been running over many years with a friend of ours, Piet Cockx. Each time we meet - and that happens 2-3 times per year - I bring a classical CD for Piet and he gives me something 'popular' in return. I must say that I have made some very pleasant discoveries with this little game: The Blue Nile, Moby, Eels, Elbow, David Sylvian, ... But not everything hits the bull's eye, of course, and this Sinéad CD has seen very little rotation. You have to like Sinéad, her distinctive voice and you have to like reggae to really appreciate her take on these original 70's reggae songs. Honestly, I am not a great fan of reggae. And I don't really know Sinéad. I have only two other songs of her in my collection: the ominous You Made Me the Thief of your Heart, part of the soundtrack of Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father (starring Daniel Day Lewis, Emma Thompson and Pete Postlewaite), and the mesmerising Harbour on Moby's 18.  Both quite beautiful songs, really, but they never were able to invite me to explore further. A subliminal fear of Amazonian, warrior-like women? Who knows? It took me a long time too to make the plunge and dig deeper in P.J. Harvey's output after I discovered her To Give You My Love many years ago.


Throw Down Your Arms is a double CD surveying the same material in an original and in a dub (more personal) version. Tonight I listened to the dub version and I believe it is the first time I have given this CD a spin. Previously I didn't get beyond the 'original' versions ('Original' means that she brings the songs as the original reggae artists did. The disc was recorded in the apparently famous Tuff Gong Studios in Kingston, Jamaica. Many of the musicians involved in the original sessions also contributed to the Sinéad disc.) It was not a totally unpleasurable experience. Rhythmically and texturally I find the disc rather monotonous. The voice, however, is very distinctive and keeps one involved. The songs that popped out for me are Jah Nuh Dead (with an evocative thunderstorm background), Vampire and Prophet Has Arise.

Now, whilst writing this blog post I browsed a little bit in O'Connor's biography and the story that is recounted on Wikipedia is, frankly, astonishing. I also learned a few interesting tidbits about the CD I listened to tonight. Enough to entice me to explore further? I don't know: the teasers on iTunes do not make a big impression. It remains too 'poppy' and in this sense the rather sober Throw ... is a genuine relief. Anyway, enough about this disc.

I also listened to Sigur Ros' Heim (with rather more pleasure than the O'Connor). Incidentally, Sigur Ros was another of Piet's introductions; he gave me (  ) many years ago. This is a disc I've always had a little bit mixed feelings about. It didn't feature on my playlist for a long time. Last summer I picked up a few Sigur Ros discs at a firesale price and took them with me on holiday. Listening to them in the car I grew rather bored. But when I started to audition them in much better circumstances, on the home stereo, the appreciation grew. Particularly Heim touches a nerve. There is something very poignant in the texture and harmony at the beginning of the song Von, for example, that connects to something I heard elsewhere and that is very dear to me. I can't recall what it is, however ...