Sinéad O'Connor
She Who Dwells...
Vanguard

James Carter
Gardenias for Lady Day
Columbia

Have you heard? Last spring, Sinéad O'Connor announced her retirement from the music industry. In a letter posted on the Web in April, she explained, "I want to be like any other person in the street and not have people say there is Sinéad O'Connor... So help me too, by giving me what is best for me, a private life." The letter, heavy on the "burdens of celebrity" material, must have seemed a bit strident to the songstress who enjoyed enormous success with the 1990 album I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, and its premiere, Prince-penned single, "Nothing Compares 2 U," a longtime No. 1 hit, and then crashed and burned after a highly controversial appearance on "Saturday Night Live." A follow-up posting of May 9 declared, "I am sorry if my original notice seemed rude, it really wasn't meant that way. I was just being honest and sometimes we have to hear things which are hard to hear... Anyway I am only retiring becuase [sic] I want to go to college to study theology and pastoral care and utilise some other of my talents. i [sic] want to run my family and I am too old also, for music biz."

O'Connor's final artistic statement is entitled She Who Dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High Shall Abide Under the Shadow of the Almighty. Here's an alternate title: I'm Pretentious, Now Fuck Off. Fortunately, the material is much better than the title. O'Connor may not sell like she used to, but she didn't overstay her welcome as a musician and put out crappy albums because she could. She's still important, although she may never get the recognition she deserves because Americans can be pretty thuggish when it comes to freedom of speech. We've been known to deal poorly with women of power, conviction and talent, to boot.

The best of the studio material includes O'Connor's cover of "Ain't It a Shame," a B-52's song from Bouncing off the Satellites, reimagined as a solid, ornery wall of '90s-era guitar. "Big Bunch of Junkie Lies," a poison poem to a drug dealer who "stole the life out of my friend's eyes/ with bullshit and junkie lies," is a sweet, mournful melody — not a rant — scored with acoustic guitar and fiddle. The song's anger is more expressive in hushed tones. "Emma's Song," originally from 2000's Faith and Courage, is reconsidered, and benefits from drum tracks of the One-World-Peter-Gabriel variety and overdubbed vocals that suggest a choir, arms raised to the heavens in ecstasy. Massive Attack stops by to co-produce the original "It's All Good," a meeting of club beat and cathedral synthesizers.

The live material is equally sound. Concentrating on material from her most recent albums, including six tracks from Sean-Nós Nua, O'Connor leads a focused band with her usual passionate, focused and deeply personal vocals. Several of the live cuts top the studio versions, including "Nothing Compares 2 U," "Fire on Babylon" and especially the reading of "Paddy's Lament," which tells of an Irishman's ill-fated departure from Dublin to America, where he is forced to fight in the Civil War and loses a leg.

O'Connor leaves near the top of her game. If anything holds her back, it's her own desire to avoid being extraordinary. The fearless musical force behind her first album, The Lion and the Cobra — wherein a ferocious singing voice delivered raw, confrontational lyrics — has given way to someone with, in her words, "bent old lady status," whose body "can't go any further." Both discs are dotted with songs done cleanly and professionally, but not with abandon. Some tracks veer dangerously toward New Age. There are no challenges here; the music is about acceptance, about moving on. This is the sound of a major artist humming tunes while stirring sauce in a pot and watching the wheels go round and round.

By way of contrast, consider James Carter's Gardenias for Lady Day. Carter is a jazz prodigy who began playing saxophone at 11 and, by the time of his first release, JC on the Set, had mastered all manner of reed instruments — sopranino and contrabass saxophones, contrabass and bass clarinets, all before the age of 24. Layin' in the Cut is a good introduction to Carter and his performance style, which is that of a man possessed. (A minute's worth of "Terminal B" is an apt demonstration.) Carter's consideration of what jazz ought to sound like — in this case, a jazz and funk free-for-all — rankles many old-school jazz lovers, but Sun Ra would have loved it.

Gardenias for Lady Day pays tribute to Billie Holiday and, needless to say, Carter's idea of a tribute is wildly different from O'Connor's. While O'Connor's take on ABBA's "Chiquitita" is less about deconstruction and more about an artist who enjoys a song and feels like recording it, Carter's version of "Strange Fruit," a civil rights anthem that Holiday made unforgettable, is about setting fire to the boundaries of a song.

The success of Gardenias for Lady Day with jazz fans depends on their assessment of this cataclysmic interpretation. The opening moments are more to the taste of traditionalists — a smoky, serpentine groove in the manner of Miles Davis' wildly erotic work for Louis Malle's 1957 film Ascenseur pour L'echafaud, and some restrained Nina Simone-ish vocals from Miche Braden. "Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze/ Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees." Then, Carter busts the lid off the song, and achieves a rush of sound, Carter's reeds screaming, the percussion a rattling thunderstorm. Boldly arranged and performed, Carter's "Strange Fruit" is about fury and pain. Is it phenomenal? Infuriating and overconfident? Showboating, daring or both? It is definitely a sensational — and difficult — four-odd minutes to take in. Popular music could stand more such mavericks. It's startling in the way that O'Connor's "SNL" performance startled the audience, and willful in a way that O'Connor hasn't been since she decided to send that pointed message to the pope.

— Christopher Hickman (hickatz at mindspring dot com)