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Showing posts with label Dolores O'Riordan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dolores O'Riordan. Show all posts
Although The Cranberries never officially broke up but rather went on ‘indefinite hiatus’, the band’s frontwoman has since made a name for herself as a solo artist, and a couple of years after her successful debut album, Are You Listening? she’s back with a follow-up effort.
As you might expect, there are a few songs evocative of The Cranberries. Skeleton, for instance might not pack quite the same punch that Zombie did all those years ago, but is certainly of the same ilk. Elsewhere, No Baggage doesn’t offer the obvious pop gems that Are You Listening? boasted, but it does have a few interesting moments of experimentation that show musical progression, such as the Indian-sounding Throw Your Arms Around Me.
The album’s theme is one of self-reflection and worldliness from a woman who has been through a lot and has come out the other side a wiser person. Okay, so she has never been an especially challenging lyricist, but she wears her heart on her sleeve and her basic rhyming couplets do lend themselves to the honest feeling of this album. She doesn’t hide behind cryptic clues, but simply says it like it is: “Alcohol and cocaine/I think it’s driving you insane.”
From the whisper of It’s You to the big chorus of Be Careful and her frankly breathtaking delivery on the album’s best track - piano ballad Lunatic - her vocal is her instrument and she uses it perfectly. To be honest, with a voice as beautiful as hers, she could just be reciting her shopping list and it would still sound great.
I recently contributed to the Drum Media end of year poll in Australia. Here is an alternative version which takes into account the UK as well. Please feel free to add your own lists in the comments section:Top 10 Albums (released in the UK or Australia) 1. Myths of The Near Future - Klaxons 2. Panic Prevention - Jamie T 3. A Book Like This - Angus And Julia Stone (above) 4. Neon Bible - Arcade Fire 5. Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever - The Cribs 6. Because Of The Times - Kings Of Leon 7. Made Of Bricks - Kate Nash 8. Fur And Gold - Bat For Lashes 9. Songs For The Road – David Ford 10. Tonight At The Arizona - The Felice Brothers
Top 10 Tracks (released as part of any single/EP/album) 1. Be Safe – The Cribs 2. Golden Skans – Klaxons 3. Sheila - Jamie T 4. Ballad Of Lou The Welterweight – The Felice Brothers 5. Umbrella - Rihanna 6. Foundations – Kate Nash 7. D.A.N.C.E. – Justice 8. Brown Paper Bag – Bridezilla 9. What’s a Girl To Do? – Bat For Lashes 10. Commercial Breakdown – The Sunshine Underground
Best Gigs in Australia 1. Angus and Julia Stone – The Great Escape Festival 2. Bridezilla - Beach Road Hotel, Bondi (above) 3. Pet Shop Boys – V Festival 4. Lou Reed - The State Theatre 5. Muse – Big Day Out
Best Gigs in the UK 1. Carter USM – Brixton Academy (below) 2. Arcade Fire – The Latitude Festival 3. David Ford – Shepherds Bush Empire 4. Laura Imbruglia – Monkey Chews, Camden 5. Kings Of Leon – Brighton Centre Top 5 Films 1. Superbad 2. The Science Of Sleep 3. Knocked Up 4. American Gangster 5. Hot Fuzz
Top 5 TV Shows 1. The Mighty Boosh 2. Peep Show 3. The Biggest Loser (Australia) 4. Extreme Makeover 5. America’s Next Top Model
Top Podcasts 1. Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews – BBC Radio 5 Live 2. The Ricky Gervais Podcast
The Emperor's New Clothes Award Facebook. Listen, I haven’t seen you for about 10 years and you didn’t talk to me at school anyway; why would I want to add you as a ‘friend’ now? And stop inviting me to be a vampire.
Best Media Moments 1. The Chaser’s War On Everything getting themselves arrested in the name of comedy (above). 2. Britney Spears’ terrifying ‘comeback’ at the MTV Awards. Yikes. 3. The Biggest Loser, Australian finale.
Highlight Of The Year The glorious, long overdue ousting of Mr John Winston Howard.
Prediction For 2008 A new buzz band to appear on the scene approximately every 3 days, each with increasingly skinny jeans and ridiculous hair. Same as 2007 then.
Quote Of The Year “Rob Townsend is inane and out of touch.” An angry reader of The Argus writes in to tell it like it is.
A Personal Review of 2007 As with 2006, I was lucky enough to split my year between Australia and England and therefore witnessed the best of Britain in Sydney and vice versa. I saw great shows from English acts such as Jamie T, Plan B, Muse and Lily Allen in Sydney. In London I was delighted to spend some time with the beguiling Angus and Julia Stone as their star continued to ascend, and also caught a couple of Laura Imbruglia’s marvellous shows in London (above). I’m a big fan of Imbruglia, and I hope that 2008 brings her the recognition she deserves as an artist.
In Sydney, my favourite new band, Bridezilla, continued on their inevitable road to greatness. Seeing them grow from unsigned opening act to headliners and festival stars with an EP in the shops gave me great pride, especially as I have been championing them from the very first time I laid ears on them at Candy’s Apartment in 2006. Hopefully, they will take on the world next year. If the reception that fellow Aussie teens Operator Please received is any guide, England will welcome them with open arms if they get the opportunity to head that way.It was a year of festivals for me, as I took in Big Day Out, Laneway, V Festival, The Great Escape, The Essential Festival (in Sydney as opposed to Brighton), Cornbury (where I even took to the stage) and Latitude. Aside from the already listed highlights, there were great performances from Pixies, The Killers (who I saw two days in a row and, surprisingly, loved both times), NYPC (above), Ghostwood, Mercy Arms, Magic Numbers (twice), CSS, Jarvis Cocker (twice), Damien Rice (twice), Erin Marshall, The Young and Restless… the list goes on.
Elsewhere, I queued for 11 hours overnight to see Lou Reed, got a late, late call to review The Pretenders and was lucky enough to be in the front row of The Famous Spiegeltent for M. Ward in the beautiful Sydney summertime.Of the many interviews I was part of this year, my fascinating chat with Dolores O’Riordon (above) in a Sydney hotel is the one I am most proud of. Elsewhere, I swooned like a love-struck schoolboy when speaking down the phone from Melbourne to the exquisite Regina Spektor and laughed heartily with Caleb from Kings of Leon as he regaled me with tales of love and lust. I listened intently to the ambitious and terrifyingly intelligent Perry Farrell and, as always, enjoyed chatting to Klaxons.
I continued to pontificate in my own column in The Sports Argus every week, which continues to be compiled into a book, which will see the light of day this year after a self-imposed postponement.
FOUR YEARS AFTER THE CRANBERRIES SPLIT, DOLORES O’RIORDAN RELEASES HER DEBUT SOLO ALBUM. ROB TOWNSEND MEETS HER FOR A DRINK
“I wanted to get away from the music industry, cut all ties with the planet and go and live in the forest to be a human spirit, a mother, a wife and a daughter and make up for all the time that I spent away singing.”
It’s been four years since The Cranberries went on indefinite hiatus after shifting an incredible 40 million records, and now frontwoman Dolores O’Riordan returns refreshed with her excellent debut solo album, Are You Listening? “When you come back, you’re not really expecting anything,” the friendly Irishwoman says about the fact that her record is gaining critical acclaim and making hefty dents in charts across the globe. “You come back for the love of it, and if you’re doing it for the right reasons rather than because you are contractually obliged to do so, then it turns out better.”
Sipping a beer in a plush Sydney hotel, O’Riordan is a picture of happiness as the sun sets over the majestic view of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge behind her. Her cheery demeanour suggests that the mother-of-three is enjoying life and, despite being tired at the end of a hectic day of promotional appearances, she talks lucidly about her effervescent new record, her upcoming tour and her surreal existence as a young megastar in the 90s. Upon hearing her story, I discover that her strength is born from the most awful adversity.Since the birth of her first child in 1997, O’Riordan has been healthy and content, but prior to that things were far from rosy in her garden. As we discuss her new long-player, she contextualises the joyfully uninhibited sense of freedom that she has as a returning solo artist by explaining how the pressures of fame nearly destroyed her. “The first Cranberries album was a massive success, so everyone said: ‘Now do it again.’ I said: ‘I’m really tired, I have no friends, I haven’t been at home for years, but…ok, I’ll try.’ When (second album) No Need To Argue (above) came out and was even bigger there was stuff happening to me emotionally which I never dealt with because I was always working. So by the third album I started to lose the plot. I was exhausted and I had all these demons. I tried to keep going and hold all that crap inside, but you really can’t because it eats you up.”
In her distinctive Irish tone, she continues: “I got really sick. I couldn’t stop either because I’d already signed contracts to tour for the next two years. There was a lot of pressure from the record company but I was saying: “I’m serious. I’m really sick.’ They would say: ‘Oh, you’ll be fine. Just get out there and sing.’ My leg kept breaking because I was so emaciated. I had metal in my knee from major surgery and I never did enough physio because I went straight out on tour. All these things just got on top of me.”
Eventually, her diminishing health led to industry bigwigs reluctantly entertaining the idea of cancelling the tour. “I had to go and see these nine doctors for insurance reasons. I felt like a piece of meat. In the end they sent me to a psychologist and I said to him: ‘Am I mad?’ He said: ‘No. The world around you is crazy and it’s affecting you. You have to stop.’ So the tour was cancelled. Then the paparazzi started chasing me and saying there was nothing wrong with me because they saw me shopping in the grocery store. I couldn’t get better because they kept chasing me. It was terrible.”
Realising that the only way to inch her way back to health was to escape from the glare of the media spotlight, she disappeared off the radar. “My husband and I went and stayed in these places that were almost like retreats. At first I couldn’t walk along the beach on my own, I couldn’t eat and I was really nervous. But with time I started to get better. I’d walk on my own for five minutes and I’d come back and say: ‘I did it! I’m not scared.’ One time I smelt a flower and it was seven years since I had last smelt a flower. I almost started crying because I’d forgotten to do the simple things in life.”
Fast-forward a decade, and the Dolores O’Riordan who recorded her solo album from the comfort of home is a million miles from the person that the music industry chewed up and spat out. However, she believes that if she were to do it all again she wouldn’t change what happened. “I think everything I went through was for a reason, to make me who I am today. If I went back and said to myself: ‘Don’t do this and don’t do that,’ then I wouldn’t be as tough as I am at 35 years old, because you have to go through some crap in life to get strong.”Considering her past struggles, I ask her whether, during the four year gap, she thought about staying away from the music industry for good. “Initially when I stopped (working with The Cranberries) I was staying at home. Then Adam Sandler asked me to go to Hollywood to appear in the film Click and I got a taste for it again. I thought: ‘I miss this travelling. Maybe I’m not ready to be a recluse forever.’”
As well as being a delightfully catchy listen, Are You Listening? is a powerful juxtaposition of the darkness and light in O’Riordan’s world. Her song Black Widow was inspired by the death of her mother-in-law, while current single Ordinary Day is a paean to her daughter. In Human Spirit she sings: “Don’t let life consume you/It could eat you up inside,” and it is clear that Dolores O’Riordan is now wise, worldly and ready for phase two of her musical adventure. “When you’ve learnt as much as I’ve learnt, the second time around you see the error of your ways. I’m not saying I’ll never make a mistake again, because I will, but not the ones I’ve already made.”
And with that, Dolores bids me a fond farewell and promises some Australian gigs in the spring, but for now there are European and American tours to embark on. “I’m back on the old treadmill,” she laughs. “I’ll stay on there as long as I can, and if I have to hop off, then off I’ll hop.”
On Friday evening, I interviewed Dolores O'Riordan. I was terrified beforehand, but she turned out to be utterly lovely and was more open, honest and candid than I could ever have imagined.During the interview, her words were wise and worldly as she told me all about her descent into illness and depression. While the interview was pretty heavy in subject-matter, she was actually very funny and cheerful. The mood was one of comfortable conversation rather than interviewer/interviewee as she sipped beer, admired the picture-book view of Sydney through the window, checked out the photos on my digital camera and even complimented me on my clothes.
When, as a young fellow, I watched an impossibly cool O'Riordan belting out Zombie on MTV, I never dreamed that I would one day be accepting her compliments about my sartorial elegance in a five star Australian hotel. Life is strange sometimes. Strange yet wonderful.
To read the full, astonishing interview, click here
Although The Cranberries never officially broke up but rather went on ‘indefinite hiatus’, the band’s frontwoman has since made a name for herself as a solo artist, and a couple of years after her successful debut album, Are You Listening? she’s back with a follow-up effort.
