 "Powerful Voice and Great Songs" | 2007-11-10 |
| - Reviewed By mvindberg2 |
"No Need to Argue" is the best selling album the Cranberries have released before their current hiatus. The album contains two of their finest singles "Ode to My Family" and the controversal "Zombie".
Though their music hardly can be called folk, there is an umistakeably influence from traditional Irish Music. On some of the strongest song find this influence obvious.
The album opens with beautiful "Ode to My Family" and the album continues with three more great songs. "I Can't Be With You" is one of the few upbeat rockers on the album - a catchy tune. Like "Ode to My Family" "Twenty One" is just beautiful and the powerful voice of singer Dolores O'Riordan is bound to hit you on the haunting "Zombie".
You may easily get the feeling that you're in the middle of listening to one of the few perfect albums in rock, but unfortunately the next handful of tracks do not live to the opening four. Though well-performed the songs are simply not as good.
Luckily the high standards are reset with O'Riordan's waltzy ballad "Dreaming My Dreams". "Yeat's Grave" is, inspite of its dark lyrics, quite uplifting.
The hymn-like title track is a fine closing track to the solid, but slightly uneven, album with some really great songs and the powerful voice of Dolores O'Riordan. |
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 "An album of somber intensity and emotional beauty" | 2007-10-15 |
| - Reviewed By wit213 |
I think it's pretty safe to assume that everyone has already written everything that needs to be said about this album. So, I will just add in one little extra thing: it's good.
Also, they seem to like building little wood enclosures and painting them white or yellow. That helps with the acoustics, and even though they aren't actually recording the material where they hold their photo shoot sessions, it still gives the listener the feeling that they (the Cranberries) are from Ireland, because there's a lot of wood in Ireland. And in Russia and Ohio for some reason. 87% of the world's wood comes from these three regions.
the Cranberries. |
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| "Epic" | 2007-04-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: A7YZLQUOLJ58G |
This is seriously a great album.
it's epically good. It's in my top ten favorites of all time.
Every song on here is awesome.
On top of it being an excellent CD everytime i hear it all I think about is the 90's...
and the 90's were awesome, especially for music. |
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| "twister: intensely irish emotion" | 2007-03-09 |
| - Reviewed By davidabaer |
Delores O'Riordian has a voice like no other, perfectly suited for the upfront Irish anger of this 1994 album. Single digits ahead of the St Valentine's Day accord and its imperfect afterlife, O'Riordian and the Cranberries lament--this *is* the dominant tone--the things that are wrong with families, fathers, lovers, and the hatred that has made 'the Troubles' so linkable an expression with Northern Ireland.
The front lady's severe, alto and usually unaccompanied voice drives each song forward with self-propelled force. You either love it or hate it. Not too many simply liked this album. It was one of those musical offerings that invoked strong response from across the spectrum of listeners.
I mark the album's release date (1994) as the year I arrived in England to study. It represented one of my first moments of exposure to European (sort of ) pop music and the edge that often distinguishes it from its cross-Atlantic counterpart. A decade and change later, I can still remember where I was when I first heard several of these tracks.
The album is well constructed. The first track begins with O'Riordian's famous a capella 'Doo .... doo doo doo .... Doo ... doo doo doo' entrance to the spooky 'Ode to my Family.The CD ends with the eerily gripping organ intro to 'No Need to Argue'. In between comes a lineup of tunes that together comprise the kind of album that is often called 'honest', a descriptor that often means the postponement of the kind of self restraint that works in the rest of life but is not always the domain of artistry in its awful naked truth.
If this kind of transparency is a virtue--and arguably it is--then No Need to Argue represents a kind of moral pinnacle. What carries the attempt through a dozen and one titles is O'Riordian's 'I'm-not-done-yet' persistence in emoting with that beguilingly odd voice and the Irish turn of a syllable that drives it from theme to theme. She is, after all, the only vocal thing the Cranberries have got goin'. She makes the most of a monopoly.
Meanwhile, the boys in back lay down a pretty spare groove that showcases the singer up front. This is true both on the raucous/metal end of the continuum ('Zombie') as on the violin-accompanied love song side ('Dreaming my Dreams').
All this considered, I place NO NEED TO ARGUE in the category of those landmarks albums that don't necessarily wear well by keening to the common core of changing musical tastes. Rather, it comes as an archived witness to a new and slightly revolutionary sound that gripped us momentarily and for a year or two in the mid-1990s. That's no small feat. |
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| "A step forward for O'Riordan and crew" | 2006-02-11 |
| - Reviewed By columbusboy |
Dolores O'Riordan undoubtedly has a beautiful voice and the band write (and play) some gorgeous melodies for her to float it atop. But the band's strength on its debut EVERYBODY ELSE IS DOING IT, SO WHY CAN'T WE? was also its biggest weakness: a wispy etherealness that overcame the album as a whole, smooshing it into 1 long daydream. There simply wasn't enough musical and emotional variety...all longing, no passion.
On this one, the band haul out some numbers with tempo and unveil a broader emotional palette. The result is a more satisfying album than EEIDISWWW was.
HIGHLIGHTS:
"Ode to my Family" is somewhat of a guilty pleasure. Its wonderful melody and alienation sentiment allow it to overcome my objections to its somewhat laughable lyrics. ("My father, my father/He liked me, oh, he liked me/Does anyone care?") "I Can't Be With You" is probably as close as the band gets to straight-ahead pop but it's a darn fine tune as O'Riordan pines after her long-gone lover ("I wanted to be the mother of your child/And now it's just farewell...") It bounces on a percussive acoustic guitar groove that soars into orbit when Noel Hogan's Nuggets-style fuzz guitar solo kicks in to close things out. "Zombie" addressed the wartorn condition of the band's native Ireland as O'Riordan took on the persona of the architects of battle, imagining how they must rationalize war to themselves. ("But you see, it's not me, it's not my family/In your head, in your head they are fighting...") It's all set to a crunchy guitar sound that would be the heaviest the band had put to disc at that point. "The Icicle Melts" finds O'Riordan lamenting the death of a young child and trying to offer hope to the grieving mother. (And she will hold him in her arms sometime/'Cause nine months is too long, too long, too long...") "Dreaming my Dreams" is poignant in its simplicity. ("If you want me I'll be here/I'll be dreaming my dreams with you..") Understated violin adds just the right touch to the song musically without veering into pathos. The title track closes things on a high note, a funeral organ the perfect accompaniment for the dead love affair dirge. It could just as well be titled "Requiem" as O'Riordan reverently recalls the love she lost.
BOTTOM LINE:
I'm not still not apt to call this one "great" as so many others are doing. But it does have enough standout tracks to say this one is worth owning since many of the best tunes did not make it onto the STARS best of compilation.
3 1/2 stars |
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| "random words/phrases, but otherwise great!" | 2006-01-01 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3KCX02LENZJ |
A bit creepy in my opinion! Sounds like they just threw in a bunch of words just to make it all rhyme and fit together. Take 21 for example: "You took my thoughts from me. Now I want nothing more. And did you think you. Could just take it all away. I don't think it's happening. This is what I say. Leave me alone." And then later: "Twenty One. Today. Twenty One." What's the number 21 got to do with leaving someone alone? But that's only a minor problem. Other than that, my favourite Cranberries songs are all on this CD: tracks 4, 1, 2, 3 (in that order).
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| "In your head in your head they're fighting..." | 2005-03-21 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1N4X6S94VXWWA |
Back in 1993 the Cranberries emerged from their multiplatinum success, Everybody Else is Doing It, So Why Can't We? The clever Irish foursome was not about to stop. In 1994 the group released this album, No Need to Argue and it proved that they were here to stay.
On No Need to Argue the Cranberries take more of a punch than on their previous album. More politically charged songs and they start to get in touch with their rockside. But that doesn't mean Dolores doesn't use her electric voice for a few beautiful ballads.
STANDOUT TRACKS: Ode to my Family, The Icicle Melts, Zombie, Ridculous Thoughts, Daffodil Lament and Yeat's Grave
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| "No Need To Argue" | 2005-02-02 |
| - Reviewed By smashingpumpkin18 |
| This album is just HAUNTING. I mean, all the songs are good and you can't help humming them all the time. "Zombie" is without a doubt the best song of the album, as well as the best song by The Cranberries. I heard the song the first time, I couldn't help hearing it again and again. Dolores O'Riordan has an excellent, haunting, distinctive voice that is just so pure in the sense that you love it. Recommended. |
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| "Brilliant.." | 2005-01-07 |
| - Reviewed By wwwkabobeater69 |
No Need To Argue is one of the best music albums ever and is one of the best from the Cranberries. It is a very underrated album with some very memerable songs. Song 1# 2# 4# and some others are some of the best songs in this album. If you're looking for some great music listen to this, this is one of the best music albums ever.
No Need to Argue about this gem...It's brilliant...Long live the Cranberries..
4.8 out of 5
Lates |
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| "Long Review" | 2004-11-21 |
| - Reviewed By adrenaline_blaster |
For a long time, To The Faithful Departed was the only Cranberries album I'd heard. Then after a few years I purchased all the other CDs. Cranberries seem to have this emotion attached to each song of theirs and whats beautifully amusing about them is that its different in each song. Well somehow or the other. They've made some very simple songs that seem to have haunted my memory for a long time and still are.
"Ode To My Family" seems to create a spark which seems to get lost somewhere in the song."I cant be with you" is a great emotion ariser."Zombie" is a headbanger and probably one of the catchiest tunes you'll hear.I heard this song on some compilation of songs and Im still hooked.Its the kind of a song that people mention when I mention the name of Cranberries.Its great all the same.Has to be in my top 10 Cranberries songs.
"Everything I said" is a typical Cranberries track. It tends to stay in your head when your doing something else. What follows next is probably the best song on the album , "Ridiculous THoughts"and all I can do is try to use the best of my comprehension abilities to describe what this song can do and does in each listen. This song brings a smile on my face which is neither sympathetic nor anticipated. What RT manages to do is mesmerise me and take my hand to lead to a place where its just Dolores O' Riordan and her voice that holds me. Its something I won't ever burn for anyone cause I have a sense of belong attached to it. Its uplifting and by the end of the song I feel eternal.
Dreaming My Dreams is just beautiful.I picturise a bench in a garden and the sunshining each time I hear it. No Emotion can be this well interlaced in a song. "Daffodil Lament" is the one of the strongest Cranberries songs.It has a bit of "Electric Blue" in it which also happens to be my favourite Cranberries songs. Its like dancing around a fire and enjoying it cause you've lost the feeling of feeling.
"No Need To Argue" Track 13 is kind of a submission without a contract that probably says it all without much emphasis.
The album is somehow incomplete which is why I give it 4 stars. I think To The Faithful Departed is Cranberries next album but its another book of sorrow and pleasure combined with agony itself.Till Next Time.
Love And Cranberries,
K |
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