Facts about Sinead O’Brien: Time Bend and Break the Bower (Album)
Artist: Sinead O’Brien
Land of Origin: Ireland, UK
Title: Time Bend and Break the Bower
Format: Album
Label: Chess Club Records, UK
Release Date: 10. Juni 2022
Genre: Alternative and Indie
11 Tracks • 41m 26s
Available at Qobuz and Apple Music in
24-Bit / 44.1 kHz – Stereo / Hi-res
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A little introduction to Sinead’s world
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” claims Sinead O’Brien in her single Girlkind – and you’re inclined to believe her. With her debut album TIME BEND AND BREAK THE BOWER, released June 10, 2022, on Chess Club Records, the versatile Irish poet, songwriter, and performer is now heading into new realms after her captivating releases since 2018.
O’Brien demands a spontaneous response from her listeners, defying those who try to pigeonhole her music with familiar, traditional notions. Sinead is, I say it again emphatically, a writer, a poet, demonstrating with her sharp-tongued biting poetry, how we humans communicate with each other in these times, how we collide, and thus sets an important accent for the future.
In the tension between words, music and images, O’Brien creates powerful sonic soundscapes – and none is as powerful and haunting as those from her debut album TIME BEND AND BREAK THE BOWER. The album’s productive tension lies in the space between her ironic, silky and bitingly confident spoken word vocals and the dynamically dancing musical interplay between her musical collaborators, guitarist Julian Hanson and drummer Oscar Robertson.
With her never-resting receptivity, capacity for analysis and adaptation, and her sense of the multi-layered structures of human behavior, O’Brien creates her own musical universe where she constantly and repeatedly materializes as an oracle for a world in permanent flux. With her work, O’Brien has created a completely independent identity consisting of two opposite poles: on the one hand, there is the sharp-tongued poet and, on the other, the brilliant musical performance artist with her two musical companions. And Sinead succeeds like hardly anyone else in merging both worlds into an immensely impressive, completely new, different entity.
If O’Brien’s performance alone is a challenge to any genre assignment and categorization, what does she actually want to tell us with these words? The album by the artist, who was born in Dublin and grew up in Limerick, does not contain any explicit references to her homeland, but the lyrics are nevertheless influenced by the atmosphere of this landscape. This can also often be observed in her fantastic videos.
About Sinead O’Brien
Sinead O’Brien wants every word she throws out to be heard – to make a difference. And she is being heard. Since 2020, O’Brien’s releases – like the single “Kid Stuff” (2021) and the EP “Drowning in Blessings” (2020) – have earned international acclaim from magazines and platforms like Rolling Stone, DIY, NME and more. Sinead also receives consistent support on national radio on the island: Jack Saunders of BBC Radio 1 and Steve Lamacq and Amy Lamé of BBC Radio 6 Music are among the biggest fans of her music.
And, of course, she’s being heavily promoted in the U.S. with appearances at KEXP in Seattle and at SXSW, in virtual form in 2021 and with a performance with her band in Texas in the spring of 2022.
O’Brien has also toured the U.K. and Europe, where she and her musical collaborators have left a lasting mark on her unforgettable performance style. On stage, with a slight fable for the color black, the artist draws all eyes to her and demonstrates with every emotion how well this almost kinetic connection with her band members Hanson and Roberston is working. Live performance is a key component of O’Brien’s ongoing project – where her contemporary sound is transformed into a unique stage universe that is both seductive and challenging.
A member of John Galliano’s and later Vivienne Westwood’s design teams, O’Brien has had a long history in art, photography, film, and dance: from Helmut Newton’s Femme Fatale and Henri Cartier-Bresson’s somber landscapes, to the modern motion performance of Michael Clark and Michael Laub, as well as the writings of Virginia Woolf and Samuel Beckett. Recently hired by Alessandro Michele’s Gucci, we all realize that Sinead O’Briens esoteric instincts influence not only the music industry, but many other areas of arts as well.
Relentless, surreal and incendiary, Sinead operates within her own artistic cosmos, shaping, formulating and celebrating her unusual response to the modern world in which we move and interact. In 2022, with the release of her debut album, her presence at international festivals and numerous tour dates, the artist is blazing a trail through her very consenting universe – and is constantly asking us to follow her.
For my part, I’m with her – and you?
At the bottom line
Since 2020, I have not awaited an album more eagerly than TIME BEND AND BREAK THE BOWER by Sinead O’Brien. I had seen her videos, heard her singles and EP’s and was immediately deeply impressed with her quirky yet very catchy performance. Sinead came out of the musical uncontoured primordial soup and stayed with me, for all time.
Her live performances are so impressive that you are immediately deeply touched and addicted to Sinead’s performance. But with dependencies the artist has it actually not at all, because Sinead is rather a free spirit and modern oracle that gives you a hand, so that you do not stray from your path.
The sound is hot, driving, disruptive and carried by Sinead’s vocal performance, Julian Hanson’s guitar, drummer Oscar Robertson and by a bass emanating from somewhere with quite a few synth lines.
I can not and will not highlight any track from the album, because TIME BEND AND BREAK THE BOWER is an album that is more than convincing in its entirety and cohesiveness. Just listen to it, let yourself be captured and enchanted by Sinead. TIME BEND AND BREAK THE BOWER is one of the best I’ve heard since March 13, 2020 and could probably become so extraordinarily good because these times were as they were and are as they are.
The album is available in Hi-res 24 Bit / 44.1 kHz and sounds extremely good in every respect.
Rating for Sinead O’Brien – Time Bend and Break the Bower – 2022
Summary
Max: 5 Points
Listen to:
A Live Performance
Mein Testequipment:
Studio 1 (High End):
- 2 x System Audio SA Mantra 50 (front)
- 1x System Audio SA Mantra 10 AV (center)
- 2x System Audio SA Legend 5 (Rear)
- 1 x System Audio Saxo 10 (Subwoofer)
- 4 x Onkyo SKH-410 (B) (Dolby Atmos)
- Auralic Altair (Audio Streaming Client mit max. 32 Bit / 384 kHz)
- NVIDIA Shield Pro mit Plex, Kodi (max 192 kHz für Audio, Tidal (MQA Streaming Client)
- AppleTV 4K (Streaming Client) Dolby Atmos, HDR, Dolby Vision
- Amazon Cube 4K (Streaming Client) Dolby Atmos (restricted), HDR, Dolby Vision
- Panasonic DP-UB9004 (4K UHD Player) Dolby Atmos, HDR, Dolby Vision
- Oppo UDP-203 (4K Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Player) Dolby Atmos, HDR, Dolby Vision
- Yamaha CX-A5100 (Preamp) 4K, Dolby Atmos, Hi-res
- Yamaha MX -A5000 (Power Amp)
- Sony KD-55A1 (TV) 4K OLED, HDR, Dolby Vision