Dolores O'Riordan - No Baggage

In a weird way, former Cranberries frontwoman Dorlores O'Riordan has something in common with Eddie Vedder, her crooning being as divisive as Vedder's grunge-yodelling. Just as Vedder's pipes limit the sort of music he can perform, so O'Riordan seems predestined to restlessly pace around the same musical patch; calling her album No Baggage is almost too desperate, suggestive of a hint of underlying neurosis. Her sophomore solo effort, however, spends little time on the psychoanalyst's couch, kicking off with a couple of pop songs (Switch of the Moment and Skeleton) that are so polite on the ears that they could easily have been recorded for Melanie Chisholm, if it wasn't for O'Riordan's husky Irish growl slathered all over them. As No Baggage progresses though, it blossoms, and the penultimate piano track Lunatic and Coldplay-like Tranquilizer suggest that once Dolores has stopped trying to write 'chart-topping songs', the real music can begin.