TheCelebrityCafe.com, who claims to be the Internet’s longest running entertainment magazine, published their “Are you listening?” review on May 22. You can read it below:

Dolores O’Riordan’s solo album, Are You Listening, has been a long time coming. Though The Cranberries broke up following their 2001 album, Wake Up and Smell the Co ee, O’Riordan’s vocal stylings didn’t retreat into the woodwork. She collaborated with artists in other countries such as Germany’s Jam and Spoon and Italy’s Zucchero. But for her long awaited solo attempt, she sought production help from Youth, who has also produced albums for The Verve and U2. O’Riordan’s sweet and resonate voice will delight fans who have missed her songbird timbre.
“Ordinary Day” has both O’Riordan’s voice and the guitar echo in the intro. Then, drum work enters the mix as she expounds how she has found her muse in one person, and how they shouldn’t be so careless with their a ection, with lyrics like, “This is just an ordinary day. Wipe the insecurities away. I can see that the darkness will erode. Lookin’ out the corners of my eye. I can see that the sunshine will explode. Far across the desert in the sky. Beautiful girl. Won’t you be my inspiration. Don’t you throw your love around. What in the world, what in the world could ever come between us? Beautiful girl. Beautiful girl. I’ll never let you down.”
On “When We Were Young,” O’Riordan talks about how things seem so di erent when one’s age isn’t such a high number. Experiences seemed more defined, and the sensations were heightened, as O’Riordan croons lines like, “Funny how things just tasted better when we were young. When we were young. Funny how things just seemed so easy when we were young. It’s been a long day. It’s been a long day. It’s been a long day. It’s been a long day. I wanna get out. I wanna go home…I wanna get out. I wanna go home.” It seems O’Riordan is hankering for a time when things were simpler, and how she felt wasn’t so sad. Her voice as she utters each line reeks of despair and need, and listeners might think back to their younger days as they listen to this song.
“In the Garden” has piano in the intro which varies greatly from the previous tracks. On this song, O’Riordan croons about a child frolicking in her garden and how her disguise has broken down in O’Riordan’s eyes, with lines like, “I see you playin’ in the garden. Outside my window. Oh. You’re like your father. I see right through you. Just like your father. I thought I knew you…It’s a panic. You can’t go here. You can’t go. You can’t go here.” The song starts o with a slow tone, but then O’Riordan becomes overwrought and the instrumentation gets kicked up considerably into a frenzied pace. It seems O’Riordan is not comfortable with this revelation and is expressing it in a song that shows o her disposition as calm and collected at first, which then becomes distraught and scared.
Dolores O’Riordan’s Are You Listening will please Cranberries fans, and while doing that, might make listeners compare the situations O’Riordan is talking about to their own lives.
Reviewer: Sari N. Kent
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
Reader’s Rating: 10.00
Reader’s Votes: 3