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Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Dolores O’Riordan (1971-2018)


PaulySure:
Zombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie! (That’s all I've got).

Null:
I was always somewhat ambivalent about The Cranberries. I do remember hearing some of their radio hits on the radio. Dolores always sounded like she could have been Sinead O’Conner’s little sister. This was not due to where they came from, but due to the quality of their voices. I will always have a soft spot for the song “Dreams,” as it reminds me of driving through the Arizona desert as the clock creeped to midnight on my way to work. It had a haunting and melancholy quality that seemed to be an ingredient in most of their songs. Later in life, I worked for a lady that was Dolores’s second cousin, which was sort of cool.

SoDak:

In 1994, I woke up to the radio playing “Zombie.” I thought the voice was reminiscent of Sinead O’Connor, which would have been great since it had been a long time since I had heard a new song by her that I liked. At the end of the song, the DJ stated that the song was by The Cranberries. Not too long after this, I bought Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We? (1993) and No Need to Argue (1994). Dolores O’Riordan had a great voice, which peaked interest in the band. Musically, The Cranberries were quite mainstream, but they also seemed to incorporate various new-wave influences. I was quite partial to the moody, dreamy songs, which sometimes had a vibe similar to the 10,000 Maniacs. I also liked it when they rocked out a bit more, allowing for greater intensity in O’Riordan’s voice. She seemed to be quite earnest. Through the years, I have listened to the first three Cranberries records a lot, as my girlfriend loved them. Will miss her voice.


Jack Rafferty:
As I sat in an Irish tour bus, air stagnant with the breath of tourists, traversing the Dingle Peninsula, I rested my head upon the window and gazed out at the gray-white sky. The icy mist of the Atlantic, the grasses along the road, and the caves and moss-coated, darkened rock of the coast rolled by. In the distance, the Three Sisters loomed in the fog, waves of land rising and frozen to the horizon. Upon turning inland, the sight of a large, elegant home among the green hills seemed out of place. Its architecture was like some hodgepodge of a church, a suburban house, and an old village cottage, all fallen together in sharp contrast to the surrounding landscape. The driver announced that this was the home of the recently deceased Dolores O’Riordin. The house stood, silent and empty, in the Atlantic breeze. Above it, the clouds, dimly lit, rolled onward.

Dolores O’Riordin’s voice filled my mind as a child, and was lost to the obscurity of time. When I rediscovered The Cranberries at a later age, it was like hearkening back to some diluted, murky dream. A sudden realization of something forgotten and left in the bog of one’s thought and memory. This seems appropriate to me in a way, as Dolores’ voice is quite dreamlike, and it seems apt that it was lost within them.

While a good deal of their discography doesn’t appeal to me at this point in my life, I will always enjoy the darker and more ethereal songs, almost exclusively a result of Dolores’ eclectic and lovely voice. Songs like “Zombie,” though a cliché example, really convey her ability to evoke sorrow and melancholy, and her characteristic intonation. The section that proceeded the final chorus always sounded to me much like weeping. The quietude and the soaring of her voice in songs like “Put Me Down” will now always remind me of the silver winds of Ireland’s southern coast. The austere gannets gliding in the sea-breeze.

It is very unfortunate that Dolores is no longer here, and even though the material things in her life, such as that strange home in the green hills near Sybil Point, are left to be silent, her voice, that was dormant in the depths of my memory for so long, will not be.

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