The Cranberries producer Stephen Street went for a return to innocence and intimacy on the band’s new record.
IT is almost 20 years since record producer Stephen Street first started working with The Cranberries on their debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? Stephen has revealed that during the recording in the band’s upcoming new album he was, “very much into trying to recapture some of the innocence and the intimacy that was on the first record on this recording.”
Stephen has worked with some of the biggest indie artists from The Smiths in the eighties to Blur in the 90s and more recently with Kaiser Chiefs.
In an interview on The Cranberries website he recalled, “Listening back to that first album there was something about these four young kids from Limerick who came together and the record was quiet an intimate inward looking record, obviously, we all know, later on they went global and everything went big and actually I was quiet interested to see if I could get them back together and get them to be a tight unit again, try and regain that intimacy again.”
Stephen also produced The Cranberries’s second album in 1994, No Need to Argue, which sold over 20 million copies. He later returned to production duties yet again on their 2001 album Wake Up and Smell the Coffee and oversaw the two extra tracks that were recorded for their 2002 best of album Stars: “Stars” and “New New York” before the band went on hiatus in 2003.
‘Roses’, the new album is due to be released this month. Stephen suggested to singer Delores O’Riordan that the band go for a more intimate, inward looking approach to recording, He said, “I mentioned that to Delores with her singing approach, I didn’t want her shouting to be heard on this record, I wanted her to be able to convey her lines in a much more in a warm and inward looking way, than trying to project out into the world”. Stephen concludes, “I think that’s really what happened. And it makes for a better sounding record.”
Roses by The Cranberries will be released Monday February 27. The current single, ‘Tomorrow’ is out now.
