CD Odyssey Disc 999: Cranberries

I’m just back from my first game of Ultimate Frisbee for 2017 and I’m feeling stiff and sore, but happy.

Five albums I ordered online arrived this week, and I gave them their maiden voyage last night. I’m not reviewing them now, but here’s a teaser:

• Ages and Ages “Alright You Restless” and “Divisionary”. Choral indie pop that just makes you feel good.
• Andrew Combs “All These Dreams” – mopey indie folk. I have a bit of buyer’s remorse on this one, but I have a feeling it is better on headphones, which is how I first heard it.
• Sera Cahoone “From Where I Started” – Sera Cahoone is one of my favourite new discoveries. Check out my reviews of her previous two records if you want to read me wax poetic about her.
• Ancient Empire “Other World” – I am just getting into the New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal, and this is one of the genre’s better offerings.

OK, on to some music that has been in my collection a long time.

Disc 999 is…No Need to Argue

Artist: The Cranberries

Year of Release: 1994

What’s up with the Cover? A classic nineties cover – the band sits around on a couch, looking pensive. I guess the couch is OK, but this room needs a floor lamp or a TV or something. And maybe a chair, so that guy on the left will be able to sit down properly.

I’m also pretty sure this is the same sofa from their earlier album, “Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?” (reviewed back at Disc 446). On that cover they once again don’t have enough places to sit, but a different guy (the guy on the right) is left out. I guess they take turns using the couch.

How I Came To Know It: I liked the Cranberries first album, and I heard a couple songs off of this one on MuchMusic and liked them as well, so it seemed like a pretty safe bet.

How It Stacks Up:  The Cranberries have seven studio albums but I only have two. Of the two, “Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?” is my favourite, dropping “No Need to Argue” into second.

Ratings: 2 stars but almost 3

The Cranberries were the quintessential nineties indie band, playing pop melodies that tried very hard to express angst and confusion but just always seemed a little too…happy.

That happiness comes from the up tempo music, and the lush production values, where keyboards, guitars, bass and drums all cycle around one another in a joyful susurrus of sound.

Vocalist Dolores O’Riordan is the treasure here, and her Irish lilt curls itself around the lush production, grounding it with a healthy helping of angst the lyrics demand. The combination lets you wallow a little in the uncertainty of youth, without falling into full depression. For this I’m very thankful; the nineties were morose enough.

The notable exception is “Zombie” which is full-on raw and angry, as it explores the ongoing violence and unrest in the band’s home country of Ireland. This isn’t a song about zombies, but instead the way hate can turn anyone into a mindless monster. O’Riordan’s vocals range from soft and sad to rough and powerful, with the music also shifting from light and thoughtful to full-blown crunchy rock guitar. Despite having been badly overplayed over the years, it holds up very well.

The other hit, “Ode to My Family” is the light to “Zombie’s” dark, as O’Riordan’s voice takes on a sweetness as she sings about her family having her back.

The rest of the record is solid, but not spectacular. “Empty” is pretty and while it is a little maudlin, it was fun to wallow in it in my early twenties. Also, the way O’Riordan sings “empty-eee-eee” over and over again is haunting and poignant.

Other songs like “The Icicle Melts” and “Disappointment” try to accomplish the same emotional rawness, but land a little flat, and lack direction. They’re not bad, but when you are trying to dig deep, anything short of devastating will have a tincture of insincerity.

“Daffodil Lament” is an ambitious six minutes long and a slow builder that shouldn’t work, but it does, partly because it is just pleasant to hear O’Riordan sing “and the daffodils look lovely today” over and over again. They must look really lovely, because she says it a lot, but I didn’t mind. Since when is more flowers a bad thing?

There are places the album feels a bit twee, but in my early twenties I didn’t notice. And besides, I’d rather an album be overly sentimental than not sentimental at all, which is the problem with some modern indie music. If the Cranberries seem to sigh a little heavily, at least they’re not afraid to share their pain.

Overall, this album doesn’t speak to me emotionally the way it did when I was 24, but there are enough solid tracks on it that I’m keeping it in the collection. I expect every now and then when I’m feeling nostalgic I’ll pull it down and put it on.

Best tracks: Ode to My Family, Zombie, Empty, Daffodil Lament

CD Odyssey Disc 446: The Cranberries

It’s been a busy few days, between repairs to our condo, squeezing five days of work into a three day work week (I have both Monday and Friday off this week) and various social events.  That said, I’m ready to move on to a new album, and that can’t happen until we get this review written, so here we go.  Yet another record with a ridiculously long title.

Disc 446 is… Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? 

Artist: The Cranberries

Year of Release: 1992

What’s up with the Cover?  The band reclines on a sofa, early nineties style.  Not much to say here, although I’m still trying to achieve hair as nice as that guy in front.  I can see why he’s on the floor though; the couch looks kind of crowded.  No doubt this was caused by everyone wanting to sit next to Dolores O’Riordan.  I know I wanted to.

How I Came To Know It:  This was a pretty big album in the early nineties.  At least I remember it being a big album.  I saw a couple of the singles on MuchMusic and liked what I heard so I went out and bought it and it has survived with me over the intervening twenty years.

How It Stacks Up:  The Cranberries have six albums, but I only have the first two.  It’s too bad, because the covers on albums three and four are wickedly proggy.  Of the two records that I have, I think I slightly prefer this one to the follow-up effort, “No Need to Argue.”

Rating:  3 stars.

When I sat down to write about this album, I couldn’t think of anything to say (note:  this is not like me).  It felt like I had just written this review for some reason.  Then I remembered that back at Disc 440, I wrote a review for a “Crash Vegas,” record, which I noted as a fine example of early nineties Canadian university music.

“Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can’t We” is the Irish equivalent, and got just as much play on this side of the Atlantic in its time.  Apart from the accents when they stop singing, the Cranberries reminded me stylistically a lot of Crash Vegas.  They are another band which features atmospheric pop songs buoyed principally by the very distinctive voice of the female lead singer.

For the Cranberries this is Dolores O’Riordan who somehow translates an Irish lilt into a vocal style that ranges up and down inside a melody, but never quite loses the tune.  It is the kind of singing style that would make a vocal coach cringe and would wreck these pretty little pop ditties in the hands of a lesser artist.  Instead, O’Riordan manages to fill these songs with a quirky importance that far exceeds the relatively simple lyrics involved, mostly about the basics of indie pop music: lost love, early regret and that frail but fierce resilience that comes over all of us in the early expression of our independence.

Like Crash Vegas, musically there is little that stands out from the other players, who are content to accompany their finest asset.  The music is a mood piece of hypnotic guitar plucking, soft drumming and a rolling cadence that made me think more than a little of traditional Irish folk music.  At other times the songs have a bit of a punk vibe, but both the punk and the folk are diluted in enough pop that you only hear it when you listen for it.

It is quality pop though – the kind that sounds like anyone could write it until you realize the band has put together a whole album full of songs that make you think they were radio hits.  A good pop song should always sound this timeless, and the fact that there is genuine emotion behind what the band is putting out helps a lot.

O’Riordan’s voice is masterful in putting the edge to all of this, and keeping the Cranberries fresh to my ears despite my having played this record a great many times (although admittedly not often in recent years).  She’s got some genuine hurt in there, and she delivers it so seductively that you’ll be humming along well before you realize that she’s singing about some not so nice experiences more often than not.

Eventually, O’Riordan cut her music career off for a while – I seem to recall her marrying a Canadian in the mid-nineties and having children.  If she didn’t marry a Canadian, she certainly lived in Canada for a while.  In any event, it wasn’t with me, and so I unsurprisingly paid a lot less attention at the time as a result.

The big hit on the album (at least in my circles) was “Linger” and the record has always lingered in my CD collection when others have fallen away.  I put it on less and less, but I always enjoy hearing it when I do pull it out.  It’s an old friend from my frail and fiery youth, or so I like to remember it.

Best tracks:  Dreams, Sunday, Linger, Wanted,