Songs of salvation

Sinead O'Connor is recovering. You can see it in her hair, which has grown from a severe army crew-cut to a soft, feminine style; and you can hear it in her voice, which is clear as ice and uncracked by inner care. She's putting her megastar years behind her and throwing herself headlong into the business of being a singer songwriter; no longer assailed by the slings and arrows of outraged extremists, she is free to be what she always was - the greatest female singer ever to emerge from Ireland's shores.

Once, she wanted to play Joan of Arc, but nowadays she gets to be the Virgin Mary, in Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy; onstage, however, she is Florence Nightingale, healing the wounds of the heart with a voice like camomile.

Last night, at the Olympia, O'Connor was joined onstage by her support band, The Screaming Orphans, and the four sisters from Donegal joined with their spiritual sister in a chorus of redemption and salvation. She got the anger out of the way early, tossing The Emperor's New Clothes into the fire before enduring the ritual sacrifice of I Am Stretched On Your Grave. She also dispensed with the dodgy political polemic and only This Is A Rebel Song threatened to undermine her reclamation of musical integrity. Thief Of Your Heart, on the other hand, says more about politics than any thinly disguised manifesto, while the self-effacing Thank You For Hearing Me should be required listening for any would-be demagogue.

Those with ears were rewarded with some haunting harmonies sung a capella, followed by a searing version of Fire In Babylon and a soothing, valedictory Last Day Of Our Acquaintance. True to form, Sinead encored with Bob Marley's redemption song, ending with a hushed, harrowing rendition of She Moved Through The Fair. Silence.