Cranberries – ‘In The End.’ (BMG)

I must confess to feeling a little guilty. Around the time of their first two albums, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We and No Need To Argue, the Cranberries were never far from the tape deck. Yet somehow, I’d stopped paying attention around the time of the third album.

I have to say, though, that the release of their eighth, and sadly, final album, appropriately entitled In The End, is a fantastic record that reminds me of why I really loved them all those years ago, and shames me into going to investigate the years I missed out on them.

Lead singer Dolores O’Riordan sadly died last year. The Limerick band decided to finish the album, which in many ways seems to have been heading full circle back to how they had sounded when they had started, over twenty-five years ago. What that means is that there’s a soft-sung voice, music that runs from the folk sound of their native country meeting the US grunge sound. ‘Wake Me When It’s Over,’ for example, evokes the 1994 single ‘Zombie’ but cleaner in its sound. There’s the anger within, meeting the gentle, which made this band so winning to start with.

Too many artists will have their final work poured over for signs of premonitions that they were making their last record. It’s not healthy; instead focus on what they have achieved and how they had come together to make a record that should bring old and new fans into the fold. This is the sound of a band who sound reawakened. The title track is melancholy, and reflective, and a fitting end.

Remember Dolores – and the band – this way.

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In The End is out now on BMG