Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?

This album is… how should I put it… beautiful in a Pet Sounds-like sense of the word. Not because it’s as beautiful as Pet Sounds, which it probably isn’t if beauty can be measured with a circle and a ruler and an empty Coca-Cola can, but because it is just as self-consciously relying on creating a “proverbially beautiful” musical environment as Brian Wilson’s masterpiece. In a very much Nineties way, of course - meaning you might probably want to stick around this thing for a minute before it woos you over.

Not that the Cranberries are breaking much new ground on here, of course. For all I know, this music might not be much more than the sum of its influences; but then again, at least there are multiple influences here. Celtic elements - which are to be expected from an Irish band, of course - aren’t even the major focal point on this debut album; they are just as responsible for the overall sound as is the band’s obvious nod to the whole “ethereal” 4AD scene: I can hear the Cocteau Twins in every second song, and O’Riordan’s vocal exercises are very much reminiscent of Liz Frazer. Apart from that, there’s a lot of traditional Beatlesque instrumentation; a bit of Eastern atmospherics; and now and then, a nod to the grunge scene in Noel Hogan’s gloomy, threatening guitar noises. Oh, and everybody keeps comparing the band to the Smiths, too, which, I guess, is quite a legally acceptable kind of occupation as well.