The Cranberries

Most Irish bands of the early 90s were chasing London or chasing the past. The Cranberries did neither. They built something quieter and stranger out of jangling guitars, and then put a voice on top of it that nobody could mistake for anyone else. Dolores O’Riordan sang in a lilt that bent vowels into shapes English doesn’t have, half a folk singer, half a siren, and she could turn that instrument from a whisper to a roar inside a single line.

They came out of Limerick, a city the music industry tended to skip, and that distance shows in the work. Their first record was full of want and restraint, the sound of a band figuring out how loud it was allowed to be. The second record answered the question by getting much louder.

O’Riordan wrote about faith, grief, sex, and her own country’s troubles without ever sounding like she was reaching for a cause. She wrote about what was in front of her. The band followed her wherever it led, even when it led somewhere harder than radio wanted.

She died in 2018. The catalogue she left behind keeps finding new rooms full of people who weren’t born when she recorded it.