Sister Irene O'Connor - Fire of God's Love

Fire of God's Love is one of the genuine holy grails of Australian private-press folk, an Adelaide nun's 1973 record finally getting its first authorized reissue since 1976.Sister Irene O'Connor wrote and recorded this alone with fellow nun Sister Marimil Lobregat handling the engineering, and the combination produced something nobody could have predicted, spiritual folk songs built on guitar, electric organ, and drum machine, mixed with a strangely forward-thinking sense of texture that reads as unconsciously psychedelic despite having nothing to do with the counterculture it superficially resembles. It's devotional music in the most literal sense, songs channelled through genuine self-reflection rather than composed for an audience, which is exactly what makes it feel so unguarded five decades later.Fire opens the record with the title's own urgency, drum machine and organ creating an atmosphere far stranger than a religious folk record has any right to carry. Nature Is a Song settles into something gentler, O'Connor's voice doing the real work without much ornamentation. Teenager's Chorus captures a specific warmth aimed at a young congregation, and Keshukoran closes the album on its most exploratory, sonically unusual note.Remastered by Jessica Thompson from the best surviving sources, with an 18-page lyric booklet. A private, devotional record that somehow sounds like it was beamed in from somewhere else entirely.