Listen Up! O'Riordan's Still a Star

IT'S always a fun parlor game to dissect the sound of your favorite band when they hit the wall and the individual players release solo CDs.

Lennon and McCartney parted ways and began making music of their own, and even a casual listener heard a clear distinction between John's bile and Paul's sugar that made the bones of the tart pop that is the body of the Beatles work.

When Mick and Keith had their infamous spat in the 1980s, the ingredients of their successful sound were laid bare in both Jagger's contemporary yet glossy pop CDs and the gloriously ramshackle blues of Richard's Talk Is Cheap disc.

With Are You Listening?, the new CD from Dolores O'Riordan, the secrets of the Cranberries addictive pop rock sound are laid bare for all to analyze.

What a sonic feast it is! There is not a bad track on the 13 songs that make up this disc, and many of them stand alongside the greatest hits of the Cranberries' mid-1990s heyday.

If her interviews leading up to the record's release are to be believed, Dolores has gone to hell and back since the Cranberries have been on hiatus. Burned out from fame and paparazzi, the singer admitted to the Irish Voice a few months ago that Are You Listening? was a hard-fought trip back into the spotlight.

"Ordinary Day" is the opening track, and it is an alternative rock masterpiece brimming with the kind of optimism seen around this time of year, when the school bell ushers in the start of summer break.

"This is just an ordinary day/wipe the insecurity away/I can see that the darkness will erode/looking out the corner of my eye/I Can see that the sunshine will explode/far across the desert in the sky/beautiful girl, won't you be my inspiration?" she sings.

"This was my first career break ever. I took four years off, and it allowed me to get my feet on the ground," she says on the prerecorded audio files posted on her official website.

The exuberant tone on tracks like "Ordinary Day" and the sexy shuffle of "Accept Things" is truly infectious, but the good feelings are fleeting.

Over a grumbling bass line, she sings bitterly that "the summer is over and I am going through changes" on "October."

"When We Were Young" is a wistful look at better days; it's a caffeinated cousin to No Need to Argue's "Ode to My Family." O'Riordan's trademark banshee yodel is front and center in the mix, and its ability to illicit goose bumps in the listener is as potent as ever.

"Black Widow" is a beautifully creepy track built on a tentative piano tinkle. "It's a metaphor for cancer and watching my mother-in-law dying slowly," she explains. "It was a slow three month experience and very sad to see any human being go through it, particularly someone so loving and kind."

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Nster.com