WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE
The Cranberries
(MCA)
RATING: two
The Cranberries have a new album out—does anybody still care? I’m guessing that a precious few Cranberries fans are left to pay much attention to Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, the Irish band’s latest offering following 1998’s mostly unsuccessful Bury the Hatchet.
But before you go around blaming the media or the fickle tastes of listeners, consider the Cranberries’ output over the past few years. After the unforgettable Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? and the laudable No Need to Argue, they came out with the shaky To the Faithful Departed, which yielded a couple of hits before disappearing into the mists of memory (quick: other than “Zombie,” name a song from that album) and the even more undistinguished Bury the Hatchet.
Hm. Maybe the quality of their music has something to do with living rooms. The cover of Everybody Else shows three band members seated on a sofa, with one sitting on the floor. No Need shows only two band members comfortably seated; one is seated on the floor again, and another perched precariously on an armrest. To the Faithful Departed shows them sans sofa in a faux room. By the time Bury the Hatchet came around, they had moved out of the living room completely, into a dream world with unappetizing images of a naked person and a giant eye. Hey, maybe that sofa’s magic. The closer they stay to it, the better their songs are.
The living room is nowhere in sight in this latest outing, and neither is the old talent that made pop-rock superstars of the Cranberries. “Analyse,” the first single off the album, received radio and music video airplay, but left no impact on the public. And neither will any of the 12 other songs on Wake Up and Smell the Coffee.
Dolores O’ Riordan still possesses one of the clearest, most distinctive voices in rock, so it’s discouraging to hear her use it on her grade school lyrics: “I have a dream, strange it may seem/ It was my perfect day,” she sings on the opening lines to the album’s first track, “Never Grow Old.” Lyrics so bad they actually rhyme, ladies and gentlemen. And it doesn’t get any better than that. How about, “We better think about the consequences/ We better think about the global census”? Or perhaps, “Come here my lover, something’s on your mind?/ Listen to no other, they could be unkind.”
O’Riordan leaves her mark all over the album. All lyrics credited to her, and the music is credited to O’Riordan and Noel Hogan “except tracks 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, by O’Riordan.” (You do the math.) The feisty frontwoman might deserve all the credit she gets for her magnetic onstage presence and unique voice, but let’s face it—her lyrics are terrible, and her musical range is limited. Hogan, who used to at least collaborate on all the music, is a palpable absence in this effort. Without Hogan, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee doesn’t present much progress from the group’s last album, and that one didn’t wander too far from the one before that. In fact, some of the tunes sound recycled from releases past. Or maybe it’s just hard to tell, because of the little variety amongst the tracks.
Admittedly, a handful of the songs are pretty catchy—but that’s probably thanks to O’Riordan’s annoying rhyming than any musical credit. The ones that do stand out, like “Analyse,” “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee” and “This is The Day” are clear exceptions to the rest of the album. These are the tracks where O’Riordan and her bandmates hint at the depth that they used to have.
What does separate Wake Up from the rest of their discography is the album’s gormless optimism. Where the Cranberries have always had a cause to wave their fists for (drug abuse, racism, violence, etc.), O’Riordan notes in the liner notes that this “is an extremely up and grateful album” (adding, mysteriously, “a far cry from To the Faithful Departed, but life is short and meant to be enjoyed”). Now, I have nothing against happy songs, but the Cranberries are just no good at it. Somebody somewhere is bound to like the shallow joys offered here, but Wake Up and Smell the Coffee just isn’t my cup of tea.—Kristine Fonacier
(MCA)
RATING: two
The Cranberries have a new album out—does anybody still care? I’m guessing that a precious few Cranberries fans are left to pay much attention to Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, the Irish band’s latest offering following 1998’s mostly unsuccessful Bury the Hatchet.
But before you go around blaming the media or the fickle tastes of listeners, consider the Cranberries’ output over the past few years. After the unforgettable Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? and the laudable No Need to Argue, they came out with the shaky To the Faithful Departed, which yielded a couple of hits before disappearing into the mists of memory (quick: other than “Zombie,” name a song from that album) and the even more undistinguished Bury the Hatchet.
Hm. Maybe the quality of their music has something to do with living rooms. The cover of Everybody Else shows three band members seated on a sofa, with one sitting on the floor. No Need shows only two band members comfortably seated; one is seated on the floor again, and another perched precariously on an armrest. To the Faithful Departed shows them sans sofa in a faux room. By the time Bury the Hatchet came around, they had moved out of the living room completely, into a dream world with unappetizing images of a naked person and a giant eye. Hey, maybe that sofa’s magic. The closer they stay to it, the better their songs are.
The living room is nowhere in sight in this latest outing, and neither is the old talent that made pop-rock superstars of the Cranberries. “Analyse,” the first single off the album, received radio and music video airplay, but left no impact on the public. And neither will any of the 12 other songs on Wake Up and Smell the Coffee.
Dolores O’ Riordan still possesses one of the clearest, most distinctive voices in rock, so it’s discouraging to hear her use it on her grade school lyrics: “I have a dream, strange it may seem/ It was my perfect day,” she sings on the opening lines to the album’s first track, “Never Grow Old.” Lyrics so bad they actually rhyme, ladies and gentlemen. And it doesn’t get any better than that. How about, “We better think about the consequences/ We better think about the global census”? Or perhaps, “Come here my lover, something’s on your mind?/ Listen to no other, they could be unkind.”
O’Riordan leaves her mark all over the album. All lyrics credited to her, and the music is credited to O’Riordan and Noel Hogan “except tracks 1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, by O’Riordan.” (You do the math.) The feisty frontwoman might deserve all the credit she gets for her magnetic onstage presence and unique voice, but let’s face it—her lyrics are terrible, and her musical range is limited. Hogan, who used to at least collaborate on all the music, is a palpable absence in this effort. Without Hogan, Wake Up and Smell the Coffee doesn’t present much progress from the group’s last album, and that one didn’t wander too far from the one before that. In fact, some of the tunes sound recycled from releases past. Or maybe it’s just hard to tell, because of the little variety amongst the tracks.
Admittedly, a handful of the songs are pretty catchy—but that’s probably thanks to O’Riordan’s annoying rhyming than any musical credit. The ones that do stand out, like “Analyse,” “Wake Up and Smell the Coffee” and “This is The Day” are clear exceptions to the rest of the album. These are the tracks where O’Riordan and her bandmates hint at the depth that they used to have.
What does separate Wake Up from the rest of their discography is the album’s gormless optimism. Where the Cranberries have always had a cause to wave their fists for (drug abuse, racism, violence, etc.), O’Riordan notes in the liner notes that this “is an extremely up and grateful album” (adding, mysteriously, “a far cry from To the Faithful Departed, but life is short and meant to be enjoyed”). Now, I have nothing against happy songs, but the Cranberries are just no good at it. Somebody somewhere is bound to like the shallow joys offered here, but Wake Up and Smell the Coffee just isn’t my cup of tea.—Kristine Fonacier
posted by Kristine F. | Tuesday, January 01, 2002
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