Collaborations

1	Special Cases / Massive Attack Radio Edit 3:48
2	1000 Mirrors / Asian Dub Foundation 4:54
3	Empire 5:50
4	Guide Me God / Ghostland 3:31
5	Visions of You / Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart 4:21
6	Release / Afro Celt Sound System Album Edit 4:14
7	Wake Up and Make Love With Me / The Blockheads 4:58
8	Kingdom of Rain / The The Album Version 5:51
9	I'm Not Your Baby 5:50
10	Tears from the Moon / Conjure One Album Version 4:18
11	Blood of Eden Album Edit 5:05
12	Harbour 6:25
13	Up in Arms / Aslan 3:40
14	It's All Good / Damien Dempsey 4:23
15	Heroine 4:25
16	Monkey in Winter 5:01
17	All Kinds of Everything 2:44

Barnes & Noble

Sinéad O'Connor claims to have retired from music, but this 17-song collection begs to differ. Spanning most of the singer's career, it brings O'Connor together with both kindred spirits and folks one might not ordinarily imagine in her orbit. The former sphere includes artists such as Moby (her aide de camp on the wraithlike "Harbor") and Peter Gabriel (whose plaintive delivery contrasts intriguingly with Sinéad's measured murmur on "Blood of Eden"). Left field holds some equally interesting items, notably a cover of Ian Dury's "Wake Up and Make Love With Me," powered by Dury's old band, the Blockheads, and the piano-led "Up In Arms," a vintage-2001 teaming with Irish art-rockers Aslan. O'Connor's longstanding fascination with rhythm is the thread that ties the set together most effectively, from the Eastern-tinged beatfest "Guide Me God" (which features guest vocals from Natacha Atlas) to the reggae foray "Empire." A pair of collaborations with U2 (the better of which, "I'm Not Your Baby," was culled from the soundtrack of Wim Wenders's The End of Violence) will probably get the most attention from casual listeners, but its in her work with lesser-known folk (like the Asian Dub Foundation) that O'Connor's collaborative abilities really shine. David Sprague

All Music Guide

As one of alternative rock's most sought-after collaborators -- having Sinéad on even one track would garner enough press to render a release noteworthy -- O'Connor racked up enough "guest vocalist" credits during the late '80s/early '90s to warrant two of these compilations. For the most part, her forays into dub, dance, and Anglo-Irish rock were successful, culminating in multiple platforms for her distinctive and often otherworldly voice to rise into the great beyond from. Spirituality -- despite her habit of tearing up pinups of pontiffs -- has always played a huge role in O'Connor's artistic persona, and many of the songs featured on Collaborations rely on Eastern mysticism ("Visions of You" with Jah Wobble's Invaders of the Heart) and deconstructed Christianity (Peter Gabriel's gorgeous "Blood of Eden"). This preoccupation with the inward serves her well on lush, mid-tempo projects with the Asian Dub Foundation ("1000 Mirrors") and the The ("Kingdom of Rain") but has a tendency to fall short on works recorded with the Edge ("Heroine"), Moby ("Harbour"), and Terry Hall (the latter's whimsical and sugar-coated "All Kinds of Everything" sticks out like a sore thumb here). All in all it's as essential a piece of O'Connor's history as anything in her catalog -- although the omission of "Haunted" with Shane MacGowan & the Popes is nearly unforgivable -- and a huge missing chunk in the puzzle for fans who had to sit through records by Afro Celt Sound System and Damien Dempsey to get the pieces in the first place. Reverend Lee Power