Sinead Lohan: "No Mermaid" (Grapevine)

Roughly 35,000 of you people out there bought Sinead Lohan's Who Do You Think I Am?, believing claims that it was her first album. You were conned. Even Sinead now admits that her debut was "as much Declan Sinnott's [her producer's] album as it was mine". There is no such dual-signature on No Mermaid, the album which makes pretty incontestable claims that Ireland has finally produced a female singer-songwriter to match the best of her peers on a global level. Not that you'd know it from the title track, which drowns in a sea of watery cliches. Likewise Don't I Know, despite its promising opening verse evaporates before it ends and Whatever It Takes, though pleasant, is little more than a pop single. But just when you begin to lose hope, Sinead slides in one of the album's two moodier masterpieces, Loose Ends - which, along with Hot On Your Train, highlights her understated talent as a singer, the way she can insinuate her way behind the text of a song, breathe in its direction and make it live. The standard rarely dips for the rest of the album, with Malcolm Burns's time as sidekick to Daniel Lanois clearly dictating that he give Sinead all the space she needs to float, net the ambience of New Orleans, the city - or rather, the state of mind - in which the album was recorded. Songs like What Can Never Be are simply beautiful. As is this album.