By Sean O' Driscoll

Sinead O’Connor wowed New York last weekend with a fresh new sound, despite pulling out of a show in Philadelphia.

In Webster Hall on Friday night, Sinead turned away completely from all her old numbers, exploring only her new Rastafarian-themed CD, Throw Down Your Arms.

Just a few years ago, she was ordained by an eccentric bishop as the world’s first ever female priest of an ultra conservative Catholic splinter group.

So Sinead the Rasta priest makes absolutely no sense, but logic was never the point with Sinead. It was the madness, the spiritual yearning, the unpredictability and, most of all, the music.

She was there at her altar at Webster Hall with classic rhythm duo, Sly and Robbie, who produced her album, Sly laying down the low drum rhythm, Robbie pulling up classic Jamaican beats on guitar. They were there to worship Sinead’s rebirth, along with reggae legend Burning Spear, who helped write Sinead’s album.

Her months in Jamaica have paid off, lounging through Bob Marley, Lee Perry and Peter Tosh, seemingly enjoying a religious experience that went way beyond her two-decade long obsession with Catholic ritual.

For “Rivers of Babylon,” she was backed only by singers and acoustic guitar, singing plaintively. Pete Tosh’s “Downpressor Man” is introduced with a cheesy, “This one’s for the ladies.”

So is this all ironic? Is this all one more twisted Sinead O’Connor joke, in which we learn that she is no more a Rastafarian than a conservative priest?

Her dedication to the music, and her enjoyment of the rhythms suggests otherwise. Only during the reggae classic, “Jah Nuh Dead” does she suggest hints of her Celtic past.

Irish Catholic guilt has lost Sinead to Rasta rhythm. Let her go. She’s gone to a much better place.