The Cranberries Set to Release First Album in a Decade
Irish alt-rockers The Cranberries were one hot band back in the '90s. With massive singles like "Linger," "Dreams," and "Zombie," they dominated the charts, selling over 30 million records worldwide, and crisscrossed the globe with a show that was raw and energetic. But in the early '00s, the group dropped off the radar when they opted to take an indefinite hiatus. In the intervening years, I've occasionally poked around to see what they were up to, if anything. Every now and then a band member would surface with a solo project, a reunion got airborne but sputtered out long before they ever reached my neck of the woods, and always there was that rumored album to come.
Well, The Cranberries have made good on their word. After announcing in 2009 that they were working on new material, the band's sixth studio effort, Roses, is in the can and is slated for a Valentine's Day 2012 release. The forthcoming album was produced by longtime friend and frequent collaborator Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur, Kaiser Chiefs), who also worked with the group on their breakout record, Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can't We? (1993), the multi-platinum selling No Need to Argue (1994), and the band's last album, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee (2001). Some of the songs on Roses—"Raining in My Heart," "Someday," "In it Together," and "Astral Projections"—actually date back nearly a decade when the band first worked on them in recording sessions on what was planned to be their follow-up to Wake Up and Smell the Coffee. That album was scrapped, however, when they instead decided to part ways.
Frontwoman Dolores O'Riordan, whose killer pipes were the pivotal instrument that transformed The Cranberries from a group of young Irish hopefuls at the close of the '80s to an international sensation in just a few short years, says she and her bandmates—guitarist and fellow songwriter Noel Hogan, bassist Michael Hogan, and drummer Fergal Lawler—had reached a point where they felt they were simply "going through the motions" when they walked away from The Cranberries. Several of the band members were itching to move onto other projects including O'Riordan, who put out two solo albums (Are You Listening in 2007 and No Baggage in 2009). She also married, had a brood of kids, and moved to rural Northern Ontario with her family.
The Cranberries worked on 19 tracks for the Roses album, both in Toronto and London. Although only 11 songs made the cut, the band intend to release the remainder of the material as B-sides and bonus tracks. According to Street, Roses marks a return to the delicate, darker ambience of the band's earlier work. The album includes string arrangements and songs that vary in pace and mood, from the ballad "Fire and Soul," with its drum loops and hint of electronica, to the reggae infused "Raining in My Heart," to the atmospheric "Astral Projections."
Thematically, Roses deals with relationships, both romantic and otherwise. But The Cranberries got some living under their belts over the years. Their perspective has matured. The music was inspired by real-life concerns of adulthood, parenting and mortality. Take the seize-the-day lead single, "Tomorrow," for instance, which was recently released for streaming. In her lilting, heavily-accented voice, O'Riordan sings about moving on and reflects on the younger generation, whose worries appear utterly insurmountable but seem foolish now to her more older and wiser self.
The Limerick quartet—who formed back in 1989 as The Cranberry Saw Us with singer Niall Quinn but changed their name to The Cranberries when Quinn exited and was replaced by O'Riordan—briefly reunited after a 6-year hiatus for an acoustic performance in 2009 when O'Riordan received an honoree degree at Trinity College. "The minute we started playing, it felt like we'd never stopped," the singer recalls. "There's something about playing with The Cranberries. It's like putting on a perfect pair of shoes. It just fits." A 107-date reunion tour followed in 2009-2010 which took the band all over Europe as well as to North and South America and Asia, culminating in their first ever shows in China. During the tour the newly rejuvenated Cranberries began working on some fresh material.
"I always had the attitude that there would be another album," says guitarist Noel Hogan. "We just agreed we needed to get away from it for a while. We had all had kids, and they were still babies. We were working on an album, but nobody was really excited about it. We were away from home a lot. And when it came to writing, Dolores and myself, being the writers, had different ideas of what direction to go in. It just didn't feel like we were doing it for the right reasons. So we just said, 'Let's everybody go off and raise your kids, go and work with other people, write different things, get everything out of your system that you want to, and then we'll come back to this.' But like all these things, one year turns into two, and three. Then it was left sitting there, where nobody ever said anything about doing it or not doing it." But he and O'Riordan were passing ideas back and forth the whole time, stoking the embers of their band.
"[Roses] is kind of picking up where we left off," O'Riordan says. "It really came together nicely. A lot of the tracks were written without really thinking about it. They just came. I suppose we had more respect for each other and what we were doing…we're really happy and really appreciate what we have together."
You can sample some of the new Cranberries music on the band's website at www.cranberries.com. The group are planning to play Australia in March 2012 and expect more dates to follow Roses' release, including a return to North America.
