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Rating: We are in Limerick, Ireland, the nineties have just begun, and in the city, a band with an unassuming name, The Cranberries, has recently formed, but with excellent potential. The singer, very young, is named Dolores Mary Eileen O'Riordan, she likes to keep her hair short like the boys, she likes to hang out with boys, and she behaves a bit like a tomboy, but she has an angelic voice that convinced the boys in the band to choose her as their vocalist without a second thought.
The Cranberries are making their world debut, apart from a demo titled 'Uncertain' which did not arouse the slightest interest. They secured a contract with Island Records and prepared a work with an extremely long but utterly sincere title: "Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can't We?" which means "Everyone else is doing it, so why can't we?".
This is The Cranberries of the early nineties, a group that doesn't want to change the world, but just make some good music. And the purity of the group is reflected in the cleanness of this album, which smells of Ireland's green hills and pints brimming with Guinness, of old pubs hidden in the city, of dreams of four young leprechauns.
The album begins wonderfully with the poignant I Still Do, where the young singer opens the album whispering "Am I ready for this?". I Still Do is beautiful, but the great masterpiece of the album, in my opinion, is the second track, Dreams, characterized by Dolores's vocalizations which at the end mix with the lower and less talented vocalizations of a boy, giving the piece an Oriental touch. Dreams is the second single after Linger, which, besides launching the album, is also the first song ever written by the group.
Dolores's life during that period was not easy at all. Having left home just after coming of age, (she lived with her parents, sister, and five brothers on a humble farm), she lived a troubled relationship with a boy, from whom she was often mistreated. And her suffering is found in practically almost all the tracks, from the intense Not Sorry, where she vents her anger towards her boyfriend, to How, a beautiful rock piece, from Sunday, very refined, which was released as a single in the USA, to the very romantic I Will Always, which in the chorus echoes John Lennon's Happy Christmas.
Also very beautiful are Waltzing Back, dominated by the sound of the guitars, accompanied by the strange vocalizations of the brilliant singer, and the engaging Still Can't, in addition to the rock ballad Pretty. The album is extremely beautiful in its naturalness of sounds and feelings, and while listening to it, you can perceive the feelings of the extraordinary frontwoman, as well as the carefreeness of the band.
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