THE CRANBERRIES Black. There are times during ‘Zombie’ GLASGOW (not least the “With their tanks and their bombs/And their bombs and their BARROWLANDS guns” refrain) when w e’re pushed yet LO N D O N SHEPHERDS further into the pastel-coloured BUSH EMPIRE hinterland of Songs Of Praise, St Winifred’s School Choir, ornamental SHE ASKS them how they’re doing, plates with wounded puppies on them

and they roar. She performs a weird and Woman's Weekly: all ‘to be sure, PICTURE: ROGER SARGENT dance that makes her look like a the world is full of evil and we need clockwork doll, and they make a more love and understanding, really’. sound like an aircraft engine. She’s She gets away with it, of course. worked on this trick where she flips It’s all frighteningly heartfelt: once back on her heels and flashes them a you’ve beheld the way she sings the smile, and even that causes rapture. most emotive lines (eyes closed, teeth So, when she holds out the clenched), sounding like someone microphone during a brilliantly hurling out distilled drops of angst- energised reading of ‘Wanted’, they juice, you feel like a nobbo cynic for sing the “Woa-hoo-woah” bits as if finding it all a bit cloying and have to they’ve crash-landed in Celtic Park. salute her. Such is a crucial part of the She lets ‘Linger’ ascend into a huge, Dolores O’Riordan mystique: the idea love-drenched chant, during which she that she’s the last angelic innocent in leaves the microphone behind and an encroaching world of nastiness. starts conducting the audience. On Thora Hird can have her when she’s and on it goes, until she leads the 50. Right now, she’s a little too charge into a giggle-ridden version of convincing. The Carpenters’ ‘Close To You’ and That’s why, 72 hours after she’s left strides into the wings... and 2,000 Glasgow, she can put on a ludicrous Glaswegians set about trying to put white tutu, tell a far more genteel the floor through. crowd (thermal his-and-hers jackets, During all this, two things become beige polo shirts) to prepare clear: that given a spotlight that themselves for another bit of soul- tracks Dolores’ every step, and droves baring by shutting up - and whisper of beered-up disciples, The Cranberries ‘No Need To Argue’ against a take every one of your oven-ready backcloth of absolute silence. It’s why suspicions - that they’re a little too ‘Dreams’ remains a chunk of fizzed-up pasty-faced, that even their most euphoria that simply sounds fantastic. cathartic moments aren’t quite as And it’s why she can act all gooey and heart-stopping as they’d like them to “blimey, I’m famous” and make people be - and make them irrelevant; and m e lt. that Dolores O’Riordan has “star” There are lessons in all of this, too. written through her in indelible ink. If The Cranberries can flip between Put it down to the bleach bottle, either extreme on the emotional slide- the adoration of thousands of rule (roughly, from mewling despair to Americans and an ever-greater grasp saucer-eyed joi de vivre) in front of of her own charisma. She’s turned thousands of people, they should be herself into a radiant she-alien and able to let rip a little more in the revealed a maternal, factory girl- studio: to be a bit more ragged and turned-starlet persona that gives her impassioned and not sound quite so the air of a latter-day Gracie Fields - polite. It later transpires they’ve got a and it’s placed her on a rarefied scary rock-pig itinerary that takes podium alongside Bjork, Tori Amos them far into next year. It’ll probably and Sinead. She’s beguiling, happen. apparently sculpted from different Two nights at either end of the stuff from the rest of us... a trainee country bring the following revelation: icon, no less. The Cranberries are three affable, It carries her through moments wised-up fellers and an astro-fairy in that’d make anyone else look plain metallic Doc Martens who sings like silly. When she plays ‘Ode To My an angel. And that, if you think about Family’, plinking sheepishly at a it hard enough and cheat a bit, is an keyboard, she sings “My mother, my anagram of a “group who are likely to A faceful of Dolore^ the mother she held m e/My father, my end up as deservedly vast members of Cranberries mix the good, father he liked me”, and gets the international aristocracy”. the bad and the beau dangerously close to turning into Cilia John Harris

THE these clean-cut, newlywed faces. Where are the precision-tooled poproom hits boho stuff, is an indulgence most people here could happily live like ‘Two Princes’, the quite unreasonably catchy tune which single-without. MANCHESTER APOLLO handedly catapulted the modest-selling debut Docs album up beyondSo the the Spin Doctors are balanced on a precarious precipice: the gulf “DO YOU like the blues?” enquires The Most Hated Man In Rock... six-million mark? Why all these unwieldy blues jams and laboured rock-between what they are and whatthink they they are grows wider by the It’s ’s last trick as he winds up tonight’s feverish set. sludge He’s workouts from their new metalhead guitarist? Why play the minute,slower, and if they’re not careful they might just fall into it. The River twisted his insect limbs into hideously warped poses, jigged aroundsloppier the stuff from their patchy new album instead of the shiny -popIsland brigade have stayed loyal so fa r-th e y ’re a pretty monogamous stage like a half-empty sack of loose bones and told Manchester they’reof the first? bunch, after all - but they may not give Barron’s gang the benefit of the a “ Hey! Great crowd” . And they are too: 2,000 young marrieds perspiringLove them or hate them, The Spin Doctors are an astonishing doubt next time around. The more months that pass between ‘Two politely into their River Island casualwear and remarking how energeticsuccess story who also happen to be competent and Princes’ and an equally poppy follow-up, the more likely this crowd is to tonight’s show is compared to their last musical excursion. Crowdedperformers. But they’re fooling only themselves if they really believeskip their future shows in favour of late-night shopping at B&Q. House might have the tunes, they agree, but the Spin Doctors arefans are neo-hippy Deadheads reliving Woodstock 25 years later. There’sAnd no, that’s not a snide dig at suburban taste, just at blinkered completely out of control! Phew! only one reason this hall is packed tonight: ‘Two Princes’, dismissivelyhippies who think they’re above it. But still, despite this charged atmosphere, there is disappointmentbashed on out as a slightly flat encore. All the rest, the rhythm’n’grits______bar- Stephen Dalton LES NEGRESSES VERTES RELEASED 24TH OCTOBER CD & 1 2 " AN APERITIF FEATURING REMIXES BY TODD TERRY, KENNY DOPE MASTERS AT WORK AND MASSIVE ATTACK

29 October 1994 New Musical Express - Page 37