Cranberries – Page 2 – My (life in) music lists

Vinyl love: The Cranberries “Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: The Cranberries
Album Title: Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?
Year released: 1993
Year reissued: 2018
Details: standard black, 25th anniversary, 180 gram, remastered at Abbey Road studios

The skinny: Living in North America, my first exposure to the jangle rock of The Cranberries and the incredible vocals of frontwoman Dolores O’Riordan was the single “Linger”. MTV picked the video up, MuchMusic soon followed suit, and then, it was everywhere. This was just the beginning, of course, because the band would explode and achieve outright superstar status the following year with “Zombie”. But we’re talking about the debut right now and this here is its 25th anniversary. Before Dolores tragically died earlier this year, plans were already underway to remaster this album at Abbey Road Studios in celebration and as you can see above, it also became a way to remember her glorious voice.

Standout track: “Dreams”

Best tunes of 2001: #15 The Cranberries “Analyse”

<< #16 | #14 >>

My wife Victoria had been a fan of The Cranberries for a while, especially their sophomore album, “No need to argue”, which came out around the time when her and I were still just friends, just getting to know each other. She followed the group through their third and fourth albums, and I’m reasonable sure she went to see them live at Molson Amphitheatre in Toronto in the summer of 1999 or 2000. I also really enjoyed “No need to argue”, but had gotten into the band the year earlier with their debut album, “Everybody else is doing it, so why can’t we?”. Unlike Victoria, however, I didn’t go in for their next two albums.

Then, the band’s fifth album, “Wake up and smell the coffee”, came out in 2001 and as I mentioned in my last post in this series, I was doing a lot of digging for music so I decided to give the new stuff a shot. I found the first two songs “Never grow old” and this one, “Analyse”, a fresh return to form, which makes sense to me now that I know that producer Stephen Street (who produced their first two) returned to work with them on this album. I played it for Victoria, who liked it as well, and after that, we’d both bop along to “Analyse” on more than one of the many road trips to Toronto and back that we endured in those days.

That messy opening drum line by Fergal Lawler becomes lovingly enveloped by jangly guitars that sound like a perfect blend of “Dreams” and “Linger”. Of course, the music easy on the ears but we can’t talk about The Cranberries without talking about the voice of Dolores O’Riordan. Those beautiful set of lungs and vocal chords are adept at producing yelps and snarls and heavenly chorus, all within the same breath, though on “Analyse” she is subdued, just teasing us with explosions until just the right moment and then, she unleashes it upon us.

As many of you reading this are likely aware, the world was robbed of that blissful voice last January when Dolores O’Riordan was found dead in a hotel room in London. As far as I know, cause of death has yet been made public knowledge but what we already know is that she was a talent that won’t ever be reproduced.