The Cranberries - Rostrum for Irish Politics

It is hard to match Janis Joplin’s Ball and Chain. Ball and Chain is a song unlike any other. It is impossible to tell when the chorus start; or end. Or for that matter, when the song technically begins. And to cap it all, it has Janis Joplin in it. She doesn’t sing. She wails; make rasp babble in between, with smacks of intermittent hysteric clatter, alternating with hushed sweet murmurs; almost inaudible whispers, and finally completing with shocking shrieks and howls; in all her nonchalant heroin dosed-maverick demure. The 60s is indeed a frightening decade to be in. This dispirited, snuff-injected, folk-blues mercenary maiden will devour James Blunt as starters.

But then, through the decades, a worthy successor emerge. No, the Cranberries have not attain the iconic status of Joplin. And perhaps won’t ever. But this Irish rock group, formed in 1990, and ushered by chieftain vocalist Dolores O’Riordan, offers a worthy progression, though succinctly, to Joplin’s discordant music, vocal tread, and undertone lyrics. To an uninitiated ear, the Cranberries offer nothing more than melodic banshee-wails. But the Cranberries have been injecting sublime ideologies and propaganda into their music since the past decade. One of their first hits, Zombie, is an Irish protest song, a stormy narrative of the Irish revolution in Dublin in 1916, where the English army brought in the tanks and shelled the entirety of Dublin city.

In fact, Irish war-terrorism is almost always a focal point that has been allowed to flourish into the music of the Cranberries. In the anthem-like lyrics of God be with you, Dolores strums out :-

They tried to take my pride but they only took my father
Even though I cried, even though I tried again
God be with you Ireland, God be with you Ireland

In an apparent sympathetic prose for the Irish Republican Army, Dolores wrote this in The Rebel :-

Seems like yesterday we were 16, we were rebels of the rebel scene
We wore Doc Martins in the sun, drinking vintage wine in the sun
What I am now is what I am then.

But then again, stories of poignant love will always remain a theme in mainstream music, hence So Cold in Ireland, a sentimental tale of tearful longing set against the bucolic Irish backdrop.

War condemnation is a recurring theme in the music of the Cranberries. The massacre in Sarajevo in the 90s was poignantly recounted in Bosnia, where Dolores sings:-

And we all sing songs in our room,
Sarajevo erects another doom.

In War Child, Dolores draws our attention to the victims of atrocities :-

War child, victim of political pride
Plant the seed, territorial greed
Mind the war child, We should mind the war child

And long before Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Dolores rants in Time is running out:-

What about Chernobyl? What about radiation
What about deprivation. Gluttony, the human nation
Looks like we screwed the ozone layer
I wonder if the politicians care

With all hope gone, the music of the Cranberries appear to have descended into mournful melancholy in Free to Decide :-

It’s not worth anything more than this at all
I live as I choose or I will not live at all
You must have nothing more with your mind to do
There’s a war in Russia and Sarajevo
So to hell with what you’re thinking
And to hell with your narrow mind
You’re so distracted with the real thing
You should leave your life behind

All in all, the Cranberries produced, to date, five albums. They are – Everyone Else is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? (1993), No Need To Argue (1994), To The Faithful Departed (1996), Bury the Hatchet (1999) and Wake Up and Smell the Coffee (2001). It’s a shame that the Cranberries have gone their separate ways.