Dolores O'Riordan, Are You Listening, The Cranberries

If you were a teen girl in the mid-90s, you quoted lines from Clueless, had “the Rachel” haircut and The Cranberries, one of the most influential rock bands of the 90s, was on repeat in your CD player. Fast forward to 2007 and you are a mature, intellectual savvy miss who’s experienced life and who should now be playing the first solo album by The Cranberries’ front woman Dolores O'Riordan, entitled Are You Listening.

Those looking for another Cranberries record beware—in her first venture without the successful Irish band, O’Riordan is back with her own sound after a four-year absence. While the Youth and Dan Broadbeck produced-album contains traces of her former group’s folk/rock production and embodies her distinct voice, it is lighter and adds hints of electronica. Many personal changes occurred during her absence and it is these events that she documents in her new album. For instance, the first single, “Ordinary Day,” is a U2-inspired, euphonious ode to her daughter Dakota, born in 2005. In the poignant “Black Widow,” she sings about the death of her mother-in-law over a brooding background reminiscent of piano songstress Tori Amos. Songs like “Stay with Me” and “Apple of My Eye” chronicle her experiences in love, the former with O’Riordan belting out its painful downsides; the latter, the saccharine yet lovely “Apple of My Eye” has O’Riordan declaring so sweetly, “as the days go by/the apple of my eye/I’ll always wait for you,” making you wish you were just as in love as she is at that very moment.