the cranberries “lost”

The Cranberries “lost”

I hadn’t really listened to The Cranberries last Album, In the End. They were in the process of recording it when Delores O’Riordan died, and they were able to piece together her recordings to make the album and release it posthumously. The Cranberries have a really special place in my heart. I remember listening to Zombie while I was sitting on my older sister Jeni’s bed. She was folding laundry and putting it in her dresser. The sound of it was beyond anything that I had ever heard. To my six or seven year old ears, it was so haunting and dark. I didn’t understand its message. I heard about zombies and tanks and bombs. The instruments were visceral. Delores’ voice was melodic, and yet it had so much character. That is one of the most formative memories I have of music.

Later, I remember, in my teens, sitting on my best friend Rory’s bed and listening to it again. We talked about how magical it was. We wanted to cover it with our terrible band that we were trying to put together. Thankfully we never did, but I remember it taking me back again to being a child and Delores’ voice opening the world of music, and more particularly rock music, up before me. My taste in music has been forever shaped by that song.

Cut to me in my thirties, working from home in my living room. Spotify suggested The Cranberries last album, In the End, to me. I had been in a bit of a retrospective mood for the last few days. That generally meant a journey from Joy Division, to The Smiths, to Thursday, to La Dispute. Somewhere between The Smiths and Thursday, I started listening to In the End. “All Over Now” was good. I liked it, but it didn’t really pull me in. Then “Lost” came on. It was transporting. It took me back to Rory’s room, talking music, then back to Jeni’s room, watching her fold laundry while discovering music for the first time. 

Delores’ voice is haunting in the song. I am not sure if it would be, had she not died in 2018. Its hard to say. I may be bringing more to it than it deserves, but I don’t think that I am. “Lost” is a fitting goodbye to Delores. Its subject matter is troubled. It talks about a world passing us by and feeling unmoored from reality.  Delores’ signature pitch bending, quasi-yodel is here, and it brings me right back to “Zombie.” “I’m lost with you, I’m lost without you.” Meaning derived from another person being the thing that tethers us to life is tenuous at best. “Bring in the night” is the refrain from the chorus. Take it inside and feel lost in, and part of, the dark.

I highly recomend listening to In the End. The whole album is worth your time. It is a beautiful and worthy goodbye to Delores O’Riordan.