Will Sinead O’Connor’s Future Compare to Her Past?

The pope has probably forgiven Sinead O’Connor for ripping up his photo on “Saturday Night Live” in 1990. He’s that kind of guy.

But will the people who make or break pop careers welcome back the mercurial Irish singer-songwriter with the release Tuesday of “Faith and Courage,” her first album in five years?

Or have such antics as the papal caper, her refusal to perform at an arena where “The Star-Spangled Banner” was played before shows and her ordination last year as a priest in a controversial Catholic sect left fans tired of dealing with her?

“It’s a challenge,” admits Craig Kalman, executive vice president/office of the chairman of Atlantic Records, O’Connor’s new recording home. “I don’t think she ever was prepared for her every word and her life being picked apart. But she’s apologized more than any other public figure.”

She even apologizes on the new album, singing, “I know that I have done many things/To give you reason not to listen to me . . . Words can’t express how sorry I am.”

And many of the lyrics reflect her turn to spirituality, and its related sense of forgiveness and peace.

Is it enough?

“They did the first thing right in attempting to revive her career, which is make a good record,” says Joe Levy, music editor of Rolling Stone. “And it has a good first single [“No Man’s Woman”] that sounds like the Sinead that was a hit 10 years ago, but is no way out of date. That’s a neat trick.”

Rolling Stone ran a positive review of the album but is passing for now on doing a feature about her--not because of past incidents, but because of the present marketplace.

“Her hit was 10 years ago,” Levy says, alluding to O’Connor’s version of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” “So the audience that embraced her is either well out of college and not buying a lot of new records or, more frightening, buying their kids Britney Spears albums.”

Kalman says the plan is to focus on the core audience that has an abiding attachment to O’Connor. Her commercial peak came with 1990’s “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got,” which was certified double platinum (U.S. shipments of 2 million copies).

“Sinead was never trying to be a mainstream hit,” he says. “And for this one we talked about making something equivalent to [Van Morrison’s] ‘Astral Weeks,’ a beautiful album, one of those desert island discs.”

Still, it appears that it will be an uphill climb, especially with O’Connor not wanting to make many concert appearances.

“People have a short memory,” says Nicole Sandler, music director of L.A. “adult alternative” station KACD/KBCD-FM (103.1), which has been cautiously testing the single. “If she has a hit, people will embrace her. But [in the past] she’s done a lot to hurt herself and has to do more to repair than other artists without that baggage would.”

FARM REPORT: Launched earlier this year with much fanfare, Jimmy and Doug’s Farmclub--the combo of a record label, cable-TV music program and Web site overseen by Universal Music executives Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine--has made its first band signings via the Internet connections the enterprise was designed to exploit.

Sev, a Washington-area band, Phoenix’s Bionic Jive and a Los Angeles group named Fisher all came to the attention of the company by uploading music to the https://www.farmclub.com site.

“These are the first signings that fulfill the original business plan for Farmclub,” says company president Andy Schuon, noting that the label’s two other acts, Sonique and Dynamite Hack, were “offline” signings discovered through non-Internet resources.

Now, Schuon says, the plan is to use the TV show, on the USA network, and Web site to expand the bands’ fan base. The show, he says, has become the highest-rated series other than sports and wrestling on cable, and the Web site has consistently been in the Top 10 of music-related sites. And there are discussions of airing each week’s installment more than once.

“The TV show was a big part of our signing,” says Sev member Phil Clayman. “From being featured on it once, we’ve already gotten e-mails from all over the country and we haven’t even toured the country yet.”

NO MINI-ME?: Last year’s “Mods & Rockers” film festival sponsored by the American Cinematheque proved a feast for fans of the swingin’ ‘60s. This year, for a second edition slated to run at the Egyptian Theatre from June 30 through July 12, co-organizer Martin Lewis has unearthed another assortment of music-oriented riches and embarrassments.

One of the former is “Festival,” a 1967 Oscar-nominated film of the early ‘60s Newport Folk Festivals, including the moment when Bob Dylan “went electric” to the horror of folk purists. Lewis says the film hasn’t been screened in L.A. in about 30 years and has never been on TV or video. It will be shown closing day along with “Message to Love,” a documentary on the 1970 Isle of Wight festival.

Among the lowlights may be “Tomorrow” and “Pop Down,” the former starring Olivia Newton-John, the latter featuring future Police man Andy Summers and ELO’s Jeff Lynne, each film sporting a story line about aliens seeking to understand psychedelic rock.

Summers will also be a member of the ad hoc Anglo-American band dubbed the Shag-a-Delics along with Spencer Davis, the Monkees’ Micky Dolenz, Denny Laine, Chris Spedding and Peter & Gordon’s Gordon Waller, among others, playing at a “Co-Dependence Day” party on Independence Day weekend. For schedule and tickets information, check out https://www.modsandrockers.com.