Singing to a Silent Harp

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

From rebellions to potato famines, Ireland is a place with a long history of hardship and an equally long tradition of singing about it. As a defining cultural activity, singing is for the Irish what baseball is for Americans or chess is for the Russians. Ireland's national symbol is a harp, the instrument used to accompany a singer, and the national genius, James Joyce, was probably more vain about his voice than his prose style.

Three singers who have among the most glorious voices in pop music are carrying on the Irish vocal tradition. Dolores O'Riordan, lead singer of the rock band the Cranberries, the ever feisty Sinead O'Connor and newcomer Katell Keineg (born in Celtic Brittany, she lives in Dublin) have distinct personalities, to be sure, but they all have a flair for emotional and vocal dramatics -- a typical Celtic intensity -- and they all partake of that peculiarly Irish mix of melancholy, anger and romance. Moreover, they all share a feminist perspective, singing songs about women taking control of their lives.

The Cranberries' debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?, which sold 2 million copies after its release last year, was wonderfully assured; their new CD, No Need to Argue, shows even more range and promise. The new record begins with a personal statement from O'Riordan, a genial midtempo song called Ode to My Family. "We were raised/ to see life as fun and take it if we can," she sings. The album overflows with honeyed pop melodies, in particular the introspective Twenty-One and the aching Daffodil Lament. On the latter, O'Riordan shows off her voice, yelping one moment, going supple and suggestive the next, and then suddenly becoming unnervingly direct: "I have decided to leave you forever/I have decided to start things from here."

+ On their debut, the Cranberries focused on songs that were dreamy and tender. Their new CD shows they can handle tougher rock -- Zombie, a track that deals with violence in Northern Ireland, swaggers along with snarling guitar power chords. "This album is a bit more experimental," says O'Riordan, 23. "And a bit more outspoken."

O'Connor has already gone way past outspoken. Since releasing her first album in 1987, she has ripped up a picture of the Pope on national TV, engaged in a war of words with Frank Sinatra and accused her mother of stomping on her belly to try to burst her uterus. But her controversies do seem to make her music all the more varied and pungent, and no one can dispute that O'Connor has an astonishing voice. Her new album, Universal Mother, starts not a little acrimoniously with the grinding, pulsating Fire on Babylon, in which the singer again attacks her late mother. "She took my father from my life/ took my sister and brothers, oh," O'Connor howls. She also bares her fangs in a potent, political rap number called Famine: "I see the Irish/ As a race like a child/ that got bashed in the face." In addition to these harsh tracks, however, Universal Mother does have many gentle moments, including a delicate acoustic version of the late grunge rocker Kurt Cobain's composition All Apologies.

The music on Keineg's debut album, O Seasons O Castles, is folksy and hypnotic, the lyrics both heartfelt and cerebral. The title is from an Arthur Rimbaud poem that reads, "O Seasons, O Castles/ What soul is without sin!" Several songs on the CD explore sin, including Franklin, which is about a woman breaking away from an abusive partner. "I'm going to find me a good man who don't drink/ who don't shout/ who don't throw my prized possessions about," sings Keineg, who has a throaty alto with just a touch of mysterious smokiness. Not all her songs work, but the ones that do, such as Hestia (titled for the goddess of domestic activity), have an engaging, combative truthfulness. Keineg says she tries to lose herself in her music: "One of the best moments in all of life is when time just stops and you are beside yourself. I live for that moment."

All three singers strive to connect themselves to old, grand traditions. They use Celtic imagery, and Keineg sings one song, the stately O Iesu Mawr, in Gaelic; O'Connor quotes William Butler Yeats on the liner notes of her CD, and O'Riordan pays him tribute in the song Yeats' Grave. This awareness of a particular past helps distinguish their songs from the typical rootless algae of pop music. In his poem A Coat, Yeats wrote, "I made my song a coat/ Covered with embroideries/ Out of old mythologies/ From heel to throat." As modern women conscious of an Irish heritage, O'Riordan, O'Connor and Keineg are creating pop music that's stirring and new and also beautifully traditional. They wear their coats well.