I’ve a songwriter friend who once found themselves at a songwriters’ retreat somewhere in Ireland. Above the room where the musicians shared their songs and swapped ideas, someone who was connected to Sinead O’Connor listened intently to the tunes as they filtered up and through the floorboards.
The next morning, this person sought out my pal. “Can you play that song for me?” he asked. “I think Sinead would really like it and I can help you get it to her.”
A few days later they were in Sinead’s house.
“She’s sleeping just now, but when she comes down, you can’t mention the song. It must be her idea to record it. If she thinks I or you had the idea, it’ll never happen. She knows who you are, so if you’re patient the talk will get around to song writing anyway.”
By all accounts Sinead was normal and homely and chatty, a partner and a mum who just happened to be dynamite at the job she was best-known for. She and my pal went bramble picking in the hedgerows around her house. When they returned, the songwriter watched as Sinead emptied their spoils from two Mace plastic bags, boiled the gathered fruits and made them into jam. There was, and never would be, any talk about Sinead recording a version of my pal’s (brilliant, as it happens) song. C’est la vie etc etc.
I’ve long-loved Sinead’s vocal contribution to Jah Wobble‘s Visions Of You.
Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart – Visions Of You
It’s Wobble’s bass of course that captures the ear first. A tune within a tune, it’s an elasticated and twangy groovy rumble that plays high up the frets. Indeed, it sounds like it might’ve wafted itself straight offa the grooves of the Dub Symphony version of Higher Than The Sun on Screamadelica – y’know, the album that, with more than a little help from their friends, took Primal Scream from an Asda-priced Guns ‘n Roses tribute act to the lysergically-kissed Mercury-winning last gang in town. Need a dubby, ever-playing and never-ending bassline to expand the senses? Want it to unravel for at least eight mind-melting minutes? Would you like it lightly toasted and mantra-inducing, sir? Forged by punk and steeped in roots reggae, Jah Wobble’s yr man.
Sinead O’Connor’s vocals are ace. Crystalline, calming and as clear as her emerald green eyes, they’re wafty and ethereal, her adlibbing ‘ah-uhs’ throughout it taking the track further east and further out there.
Jah Wobble’s Invaders of the Heart – Visions Of You (The Secret Love Child Of Hank And Johnny mix)
Eastern sounding minor chords. Highly strung one chord strums. Snaking melodies. Tablas and twang. Sitars and psychedelics. Dub-inflected desert blues. Sinead adlibbing somewhere in the background as the melody unspools. A cat dancing willy nilly across the keys of a hot to trot hammond organ and then, with a military shuffle of the snare, the drop.
And the bass.
The lovely bass.
Noodling and hypnotic and utterly magic.
Oh yeah.
On the single cut, Wobble’s vocals are cowboy-like (hence that appropriately-named Weatherall remix above), a pub singer whose real talent lies between his fingers and those four thick strings, a voice out of place yet perfect for the track’s multi-cultural ethos and vibe. On the stretched out Weatherall reworking, Wobble’s vocals are almost non existent, replaced instead by all manner of instrumentation, random movie samples, ricocheting drum breaks and fancy augmentation. It’s a beauty, obviously.
I want visions of you…L-S-D.
Has there ever been a better misheard lyric?! I thought for years that Sinead O’Connor was singing about acid, about expanding the mind, opening up the possibilities of the cosmos and all that jazz. It’s a lyric that’s arguably more fitting and better than the one Sinead employed (she sings ‘end-less-ly‘). My misheard line would’ve slotted nicely into the track’s trippy, dubby ambience and stratospheric cosmicness.
A jam of a whole different kind, Visions Of You still has the power to thrill and surprise in equal measure.
Plain Or Pan 