The Lion & The Cobra
(11/100 Greatest Irish Albums)

She’d been a shadow player around the Dublin and London scenes, collaborating with In Tua Nua and World Party, but few could have expected young Ensign signing Sinéad O’Connor to produce such a turbulent, mercurial debut album. Yes, The Lion And The Cobra could often seem at odds with itself. Yet, here was the missing link between the natural mystics (she was a sea widow and ring-wraith on ‘Jackie’, Van’s orphan on ‘Just Like You Said It Would Be’) and the post-punks (‘Mandinka’, with its dirty Marco Pirroni riff). And with ‘I Want Your Hands On Me’ she was arguably the first Irish artist to explicitly express kinship with hip-hop. But the showstopper was a furious, recriminatory ‘Troy’ with its flaming strings and gooseflesh vocal. Hell had no fury like a woman shorn.