Dolores O’Riordan

Ingrid Randoja

Dolores O’Riordan’s unmistakable Irish lilt comes wafting over the phone line. She’s in Toronto, having just returned from her cottage in Northern Ontario. Why does the former lead singer of the 1990s band The Cranberries, and a girl from County Limerick, own a cottage in Ontario? “Well I married a Canadian,” she says with a laugh.

Thirty-six-year-old O’Riordan married Duran Duran’s Canadian tour manager Don Burton in 1994, and although the couple and their four kids — ages 16, nine, six and two — live in Ireland, they spend their holidays Canada.

It’s also the place where O’Riordan wrote many of the songs found on her first solo album, Are You Listening? (available May 15th).

“I love it there,” she says referring to her getaway in the woods. “I love the rustic life, and it’s great to have a pad in Canada for when we’re touring.”

The Cranberries disbanded in 2004 after 13 years together and producing five albums that sold a total of 32-million copies worldwide. That meant O’Riordan would finally have the chance to write and sing — in her distinctive, trilling voice — her own songs.

“It took me four years to make the album, the longest I’ve ever gone between albums, and that’s a good thing because I didn’t rush it and I picked the cream of the crop out of the 32 songs I wrote.”

Are You Listening? is bursting with O’Riordan’s trademark vocal dramatics. Songs that begin quietly eventually grow louder and more elaborate, and her haunting voice remains at the centre of it all. Since O’Riordan started singing with The Cranberries when she was just 18, I ask if anyone tried to alter or interfere with her singing style.

“No,” she says quickly. “I was never trained or anything. I just go out there and feel the music and let it in. It’s a spiritual experience for me and anyone who shares the stage with me feels it.

“It’s funny, I’ve gone full circle,” she continues. “When I started music was fun, a hobby, but after The Cranberries became so successful it stopped being fun…it wasn’t fun at all. And then I got busy with my family and it’s come back to being fun, a hobby, and that’s the best place for me to be to enjoy singing and what I’m doing.”