The Cranberries
No Need to Argue

THE REVIEW

Let's take a look at the cover of "No Need To Argue" together, shall we?

Squeezed on the sofa, we can admire from left to right the brothers Noel and Mike Hogan (dressed in a somewhat questionable manner...) and the drummer Fergal Lawler, who seems unable to grasp the fact that he is right there.

Curled up on the floor, in the foreground, the blonde wren named Dolores Mary Eileen O'Riordan was baptized 23 years earlier in that Limerick where the four were born and raised.

She has the look of a sensitive, simple, Catholic girl (we're in Ireland!), comfortable with the three friends who have her back, behind which she has laid a respectable debut album and on which the burden of a dizzying rise will rest. But none of them know this yet...

Yes, because marked by an acoustic arpeggio, tambourine, barely hinted strings, and choirs supporting an unmistakable voice, "Ode To My Family" opens the album with a heartfelt declaration of NORMALITY; a sort of protective shell against the intrusive external world and its distorted truths.

"Do you understand what I've become?
It wasn't my goal, and people everywhere
think I'm better than I am."

The tempo picks up in the bitter "I Can't Be With You" to settle into a whispered, intimate "Twenty-One" closed by suggestive vocalizations.

As haunting as only the '90s managed to be, with that typical and epidemic lack of confidence in the eyes, saturated with thick, oppressive power chords like the earth covering the deceased, and a darkish patina hermetically sealing an instantly impressive melodic line.

I'm obviously talking about "Zombie", their dismayed manifesto full of anger and incredulous resignation, as well as one of the keystone tracks of the entire decade.

"It's the same old story since 1916.
In your head, they're still fighting
with their tanks and their bombs.
In your head, they're dying."

The following triptych unfortunately turns out to be far inferior to what we've been offered so far and leaves bitter traces, because "Empty" and "Everything I Said" have respectively irritating and boring final sections, and the sporadic incursion of a solitary steel guitar is not enough to prevent "The Icicle Melts" from earning the unenviable label of filler on the platter.

From here on, things can only improve, and the good play of soft and loud dynamics in the almost drum'n'bass "Disappointment" is a tasty appetizer for a "Ridiculous Thoughts" that foreshadows the dark atmospheres of "To The Faithful Departed," confirming that the quartet performs best when they can bare their teeth, even though their quintessential ballad "Dreaming My Dreams" seems placed there specifically to contradict what was just said. A delicate song in which a viola wanders around drawing intense impressions with a Celtic and dreamy flavor.

"And out there, out there,
out there, if you want me, I'll be there..."

"Yeat's Grave" and "Daffodil Lament" add an "experimental" touch to an album that couldn't be more traditional, and if the first is pleasant but nothing more, the second shows us where the four Irishmen could reach if only they dared to expand their limiting stylistic boundaries.

Finally, it's the bare voice of Dolores that, floating over the calm notes of the organ, reminds us that everyone has SOMEONE SPECIAL, and patience if they're no longer close to us.

"No Need To Argue" is far from perfect, hindered by a negligible central block and various naiveties, but after all, this is what the Cranberries are.

It's up to us whether to take them as they are or let them go...