Cranberries' comeback from hiatus yields a healthier album

By Devi M. Asmarani

JAKARTA (JP): There's something rather delicate but vexing about the Cranberries' spearhead singer, Dolores O'Riordan.

Her quaint, romantically edgy persona with a tinge of unsubtle sadness often draws us in as do some of the band's easier listening ballads like their first hit Linger or uplifting, airy Dreams.

Yet her persistent and abrasive Irish yelping, although a novelty sometimes, is often enough to make some of us cringe and vow to never buy another album.

But the Cranberries is indeed her and she is the Cranberries.

And given her past overreaction to the price of fame -- near nervous breakdowns, press-frights -- we're still waiting for her, because it isn't really the music that transformed us, though the band's musical strength is unquestionable, more than O'Riordan's daring voice.

After three previous albums and three years since the last one, the Limerick band -- hence O'Riordan -- finally stepped out of the blue with a new one that has just enough soul to regain its self-assurance again.

"I'm so much prouder of this record, there's a maturity about this one, and to be honest, however many it sells, our love for the music is still there. And we're 10 years together next year," Riordan recently said.

Ten years is quite an impressive tenure for a 1990's band at a time when internal ego clashes in bands have been redefined to a much unearthly level.

Then again, it is up to us to judge whether they really should stick together after ten years, or should not even bother making another album.

The cover of the album, Bury The Hatchet, shows a naked man, his body bent in a shamed position, with his back turned on the stare of a giant floating eye, and is a stark contrast to the low-key sofa trademark of the previous three.

Apparently they have unshackled themselves of previous shyness. That could only be attributed to the long rest the band members took after burning out three years ago and the more relaxed pace they took to finish this album.

In the course of a long vacation, Dolores got married and bore a son. Drummer Fergal Lawler and his wife went backpacking in Asia, guitarist Noel Hogan and wife opened a restaurant in Limerick, while bassist Mike Hogan spent his time off "watching football matches".

But when they are back, they are really back. No, not the glimmering madeover Cher-kind of return, but an enlightened type of comeback.

It is like seeing a co-worker back at the office again after taking a long, satisfying vacation that leaves them relaxed, exhilarated, somewhat glowing, a bit rusty at the job, more conscientious, truthful, less self-conscious and more innovative after trashing all what was stored in the caches of one's brain for a new start.

As usual, Dolores can be child-like in her songs, but she is not dreamy this time. She is well-grounded and getting more personal.

Her lyrics are alienating, but a kind of nonthreatening alienation which is unlike most of her peers in the alternative music community.

"Suddenly something has happened to me as I was having my cup of tea. Suddenly I was feeling depressed. I was utterly and totally stressed," she pronounces buoyantly in Animal Instinct, an entrance to a journey of her vulnerable psyche that is actually brought about by spirited music.

It is in songs like this that the Cranberries may well risk its darker fan bases -- though I suspect the severe brooding types would never give the band the time of day -- who dig more the second album's rockier songs like Zombie.

However, to say it abandons them is unfair. In Promises, the hit currently getting airplay on MTV, she lets out her old feisty, gutsy voice and growls.

But then she goes on to smooth it out with lovely numbers like You and Me, where she makes peace with the music and brings back the mellifluous nostalgia of Linger.

Then there is the upbeat track, Copycat, that some critics, ironically, have charged as a ripoff of a song. If the band can prove that it really is not a rip-off, then the song actually has a pretty smart beat.

A chilling song called Fee Fi Fo recalls a child abuse experience with disturbing lyrics like "...she smells his body, and it makes her sick to her mind".

Dying in the Sun is a solemn piano ballad that conveys O'Riordan's wispy and reflective voice.

The best number though is the following ballad called Sorry Son, where ethereal music is made splendid with the wistful melancholy.

"And isn't it strange how people can change. And isn't it weird how people I feared, they all seem worthless now," she sings.

Overall, most of the songs on the album are translucent, which can easily be mistaken by listeners who are not fans for thinness and mellifluous, but is courageous nevertheless. It may take a second listening to recognize these qualities.

Lyrics can get pretty fatuous, if a bit sophomoric however, like in Desperate Andy when the refrain "the world is your oyster ... " sounds as original as a T-shirt bearing Nike's pep talk.

Though Dolores is often said to be guilty of unoriginality for her voice resemblance to Irish singer Sinead O'Connor, she is never Sinead.

She refuses to get bigger than the music and more people can probably relate to her music than they can to Sinead's. She is also never a lone ranger like Sinead, what with the solid group of three bandmates behind her.

The Cranberries never try to enlighten, and it probably couldn't even if it wanted to. The band's new album, however, reflects just enough self-possession that surely wouldn't encourage listeners to jump when they're on the verge of a breakdown.