THE CRANBERRIES
THE CRANBERRIES
Wake Up And Smell The
Coffee
MCA Records
The Cranberries' latest offering, Wake Up And
Smell The Coffee, is an almost exclusively muted affair. Gone, for the most part, are
rockers as intense as "Zombie" in favor of watered down alt-pop. Even the few
that do rock are fairly lifeless and flaccid. Just listen to "This Is The Day."
It lacks the conviction and power of the band's earlier work and is just a tepid shadow of
what came before. The closest to a successful up-tempo song is the almost decent title
track. The others are just sterile. The edges have been sanded down to the point where
this record isn't any more than background music. On the other hand, "Pretty
Eyes" manages to turn the weaknesses into strengths. This is soft and haunting.
Lyrically and melodically, it's akin to a less depressing Portishead and represents a
comforting, easy side to The Cranberries' that they should explore further. "The
Concept" also takes this route to success. While the words are a bit too sugary
("Hold on to the concept of love, always darling"), the mixture of a modern
beat, piano, tremeloed guitar and moody harmonies would make this a great addition to a
soundtrack album. Perhaps the band should focus less on being a guitar driven modern rock
band. The only songs that rise above mediocrity on this collection are the ones in which
they stop driving the listeners around and instead let them move with the flow. (2220
Colorado Ave., Santa Monica, CA 90404)