Sinead O’Connor is a woman who has had her fair share of publicity (good and bad) over her 25 year career. Making a very rare appearance in the Western New York area, (in fact, Sinead played her first solo show on American soil at Buffalo State College in 1992) Sinead and her band took the stage a little later than expected at around 8:30pm.
When she appeared before a pretty full house at the Riviera Theatre, O’Connor apologized and asked the fans to forgive her, but for her comfort level, she need to wear sunglasses but it wasn’t to disrespect them in anyway. At first, the show went off very well with the exception of drummer John Reynolds losing his stick for a second causing a laugh from O’Connor. I must say first, O’Connor’s voice was impeccable. Her range was spot on throughout until the very end when she announced that her voice was “fu*ked” and that this was the absolute last song (“The Last Day of Our Acquaintance”). I would like to rewind though, and give you a synopsis of O’Connor’s behavior throughout. Since almost the 2nd or 3rd song, she was constantly looking at the sides of the stage to tell someone to either raise or lower levels on the keys, guitar or whatever she felt compelled to point out. Obviously, we couldn’t hear what was going on in her inner ear monitors but the focus was totally taken away from the performance. It seemed that as the show went on, it got progressively worse. Now again, from what I heard and from others whom I talked to around me, no one detected that anything was either too low or high at any time. The behavior could be dismissed as a trait that O’Connor has developed out of shyness or nervousness. It’s hard to know for sure.
Let’s get back to the positives. O’Connor handled an electric guitar wonderfully on a handful of songs including the opening two numbers and “The Healing Room.” The highlight of the night was when O’Connor went acepella with the gradual help from her bandmates on “In This Heart.” They all came in acapella at different parts of the song and provided a fantastic harmonic journey.
I should also make note that O’Connor had a well structured band behind her with John Reynolds on drums, Clare Kenny on bass, Graham Henderson on keyboards and Graham Kearns on electric guitar. In the end, an hour’s worth of music was played that included 12 songs, and the performance was amazing. Whatever she is dealing with, whether its stage fright or shyness or nerves, it’s too bad because it would be nice to see what O’Connor can deliver when offering a full set of songs!
Setlist:
Queen of Denmark
4th and Vine
Reason With Me
Take Off Your Shoes
Nothing Compares 2 U
The Healing Room
The Wolf is Getting Married
I Had a Baby
Thank You for Hearing Me
In This Heart
Emperor’s New Clothes
The Last Day of Our Acquaintance
We would like to thank Alanna Pohl Hughes from the Riviera Theatre for her assistance helping BackstageAxxess cover the show.
