Fans of the Cranberries have reason to celebrate: after a six-year hiatus, they're back with a new album, and their current world tour includes a concert next Sunday in Hong Kong.
The seeds of a reunion were planted in 2009 at the confirmation of lead singer Dolores O'Riordan's son, and later that year, the iconic Irish band performed an impromptu acoustic reunion concert to celebrate O'Riordan's honorary degree from Dublin's Trinity College. Those two occasions are what ultimately led them to decide to reunite for a tour. Maybe it was time to do it. In interviews, O'Riordan has compared playing with the Cranberries again to 'putting on a perfect pair of shoes'.
Guitarist Noel Hogan, agrees: 'There is just a thing that happens when the four of us are together ... there is a sound, the Cranberry sound. If you took any element out of it, it wouldn't be the same.'
Thus began what may prove to be a triumphant resurgence for the band responsible for such smash hits Zombie and Dreams in the 1990s. The tour finds members eager to embrace a new future as they celebrate their storied past.
'The six-year break made us appreciate how special it was,' says drummer Fergal Lawler.
The Cranberries formed in Limerick in 1989 with a line-up that has remained unchanged for 23 years: brothers Noel and Mike Hogan on guitar and bass, Lawler on drums and O'Riordan providing the band's signature vocals. The band's original iteration was actually another band called The Cranberry Saw Us formed by the Hogan brothers, Lawler and a different lead singer. When the singer left, the remaining band members put an advertisement in the local paper seeking a new singer/songwriter. O'Riordan responded and auditioned with a song that would become their first hit, Linger.
