EX-CRANBERRIES SINGER RETURNS

Ex-Sixpence None The Richer singer Leigh Nash left the band to have a baby, and with her debut solo album she talks motherhood versus music. Keywords: Blue O…

Cranberries frontwoman Dolores O’Riordan has re-emerged in 2007 after concentrating on becoming a full-time mom. O’Riordan, who is the signature voice behind the Cranberries hits “Zombie,” “Dreams,” and “Linger,” has scheduled her new solo effort, Are You Listening?, for a May 15 release. It contains 12 tracks featuring her distinctive vocal style.

The Cranberries called it quits after their Greatest Hits effort, and O’Riordan was asked what the biggest obstacle was in getting back into the music business after a 4+ year absence.

“Well there wasn’t any great obstacle, but what happens is as we all get older we acquire children, and we require life and priorities beyond just working all the time. And I suppose having spent 14 years in the ‘berries, and always…I’d have a baby and then the baby is about three or four months, I’d go back to rehearsal and then I’d go back to touring, back to the studio. But for the first time in my life I really wanted to step completely away from the music industry and the idea of being an entertainer. After the Greatest Hits from The (Cran)berries came out it seemed like the right time to just stop and just spend time with my children and just be a mother — a really normal mother, and in that sense I mean I didn’t want a housekeeper and I didn’t want a nanny. My mother helps me mind my kids all the time, so we tried to keep things very real in the house, you know?”

O’Riordan talked about the inspiration for the album, which she said was from real life experiences.

“My mother in law she was diagnosed with cancer, and in 2003 I moved to Canada with my husband, to the forest. And basically I had no helpers or anything, and I was just a full-time mother and I really enjoyed that experience. And through that experience of spending four years at home with my family, I wrote all these songs for this record. So they’re just about very human, day-to-day things.”

O’Riordan has dates booked for spring and summer starting May 29 in Barcelona, Spain in support of Are You Listening? A run of U.S. dates is currently being scheduled. Thanks to her success in The Cranberries, O’Riordan could afford to take time off and be a free-agent in the marketplace. The Cranberries have sold over 40 million albums worldwide to-date.