The Cranberries

As grunge ruled the alt-rock nation in the early ‘90s, the crystalline voice of Dolores O'Riordan cut through the clamour like sunbeams through the darkest of clouds. Her band, The Cranberries, had formed in Limerick, Ireland in 1989, at a time when The Smiths’ sophisticated jangle and the Cocteau Twins’ enigmatic dream pop cast long shadows over indie scenes on the Isles. And with their 1993 debut, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?, The Cranberries were able to export those college-radio sounds to the North American mainstream, thanks in large part to the irresistible coo and effortless way with melody O'Riordan displayed on romantic reveries like “Linger” and “Dreams”. But the looming spectre of The Troubles inspired a more raging response on 1994’s No Need to Argue, whose doomy dirge “Zombie” chronicled an IRA bombing that claimed the lives of two children, while the equally ubiquitous 1996 single “Salvation”—a punky, brass-blasted anti-drug PSA—further entrenched The Cranberries’ reputation as one of the most mercurial and outspoken bands of the era. After laying low for much of the ’00s, the group’s comeback in the ‘10s was perfectly timed to herald a new generation of artists—like Snail Mail and Soccer Mommy—inheriting the torch for musically luminescent, lyrically raw indie pop. Sadly, The Cranberries’ second chapter was cut short in 2018 with O’Riordan’s untimely death, after which the surviving members salvaged her final vocal recordings for 2019’s suitably sombre, eerily prescient swan song In the End.