With their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns

Continuing my trip back through the 1994 album charts.

09/10/94 : No Need To Argue - The Cranberries


Our second visit with The Cranberries and this is another one we owned (four for the year already) and I remember it initially being a bit of a shock compared with their debut, but it was a grower after I'd given it a chance - but I've not listened to it in a verrrry long time. So I'm interested to see what I think now (and it's mad to think Dolores has not been with us for seven years now).

They definitely lead us in gently with "Ode To My Family" and a couple of other relatively gentle tracks - and then we're hit by "Zombie", which certainly took some getting used to but I like it now. Apart from "The Daffodil's Lament" which I also like, I didn't specifically remember any other tracks but I enjoyed the album (particularly the title track) and didn't find it quite as jarring as I was expecting, with more variety on there than I remembered. I'm not convinced I'd have enjoyed a sit-down with Dolores because I suspect she was hard work (we'll never know now) but I'm perfectly happy for a strong woman to be making an impact and that's certainly what's going on here.

We're at #2 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a, wait for it, 86 week run (is that the longest we've seen so far this year?) and it popped back in for a week in '18 when Dolores passed away. The rest of the top five were R.E.M. and compilations from Cliff Richard (a new entry), Cyndi Lauper and Carreras/Domingo/Pavarotti with the next highest new entry being Slayer (#15).

Wikipedia tells us this is their second album and the "album's mood is considered to be darker and harsher than that on the band's debut album", including songs about the Warrington IRA bomb and James Bulger. There is a fantastically trivial bit of trivia in there to lighten the mood though - the sofa on the album cover also featured in the video for "Alright" by Supergrass (and yes, I watched it to make sure!). The critical reception (for the album, not the sofa) were pretty mixed, but I'm pleased it told me that the Knoxville News Sentinel gave it 3.5/5 (obviously everyone knows that Knoxville is the third most populated city in Tennessee). It did really well commercially though, getting to #1 in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, New Zealand, Spain and Sweden. It "only" got to #6 in the US, but sold 7 million copies there and 17 million copies globally - it's weird how some albums just take off.

Given it was such a popular album, it's no surprise you can pick up a decent copy on discogs.com for a quid but if you want the original UK issue it's going to set you back £190 or you could go for a signed copy for £175. I enjoyed revisiting this album - it felt to be both of its time but not dated.

16/10/94 - A fine album indeed

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