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On her 1987 debut, 'The Lion and the Cobra,' the twenty-year-old Irish-born Sinéad O'Connor came off as one of the most prodigious - not to mention eye-catching - new artists to hit pop music in years. Part punk, part mystic, she wrote songs about desire, God, history, loss, revolt, damnation and independence, all with equal passion; produced and arranged the songs in a style that spanned folk music, orchestral pop, hip-hop and avant-minded garage rock; and sang them in a voice that could range from the feral to the ethereal in...

I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got is less about O'Connor's ambitions than the cost of those ambitions, and in almost every regard, it is an even better record than her first. The album seems the work of a transformed woman - someone who has put aside much of the anger and confusion that fueled her earlier songs and has found a hard-earned measure of spiritual happiness. It opens with a prayer for strength and wisdom and closes with another, offering a brave, fearful thanks for equanimity. Yet it is what comes between those prayers - a journey through rage and heartbreak to grace - that ultimately makes this record so memorable and so powerful.