Turns in the road

Dolores O'Riordan doesn't have much in common musically with Britney Spears, but the former Cranberries vocalist is sympathetic to the struggles of today's pop starlets.

"They're only kids, and they have a lot of pressure to deal with," says O'Riordan, on the phone from a Sicily tour stop, where she is promoting her first solo album, "Are You Listening?" "They have a lot of people who are jealous of them, who love them and who think they own them, so you do feel a bit of sympathy because I don't think anyone understands what it's like unless they go through it."

O'Riordan went through it.

The singer from Limerick joined the Cranberries at age 18. The Irish quartet's blend of the ethereal and the muscular, on hit songs such as "Dreams," "Linger," and "Zombie," made them a success in the early '90s, a sweet but sharp alternative to the era's twin poles of grunge and teen pop.

Over the course of 13 years and five releases, the group sold upward of 40 million records. But running the hamster wheel of touring and recording took its toll on O'Riordan, as she obsessed over pleasing fans and record label execs.

"I had my little boy 10 years ago. I nursed him for three months and the band were looking at me like 'When are we going back to work? We've got to deliver another album here,' " O'Riordan, 35, recalls in a rapid-fire patter marked by a lilting brogue. "So I left the baby when he was 12 weeks and went back to the Cranberries and back out on the road and back hammering in the studio. Then I stopped again when I was about four months pregnant with my second child, and I went home, popped her [out], nursed her for three months, back to rehearsal, back on the road. You know, no real life, just really going through routines and feeling a certain sense of obligation because you're in contracts and you have the band waiting for you."

O'Riordan's weight plummeted alarmingly, and she had to cancel shows due to depression and exhaustion.

"I don't think anybody can put blame on her for anything she went through," says drummer Graham Hopkins, late of Irish rock band Therapy? and sometime member of the Frames. "[Forty] million albums sold isn't necessarily the most sane of things to happen to anybody. And I think she's come out of it so triumphantly."

That triumph had its casualties, however. When the Cranberries released their greatest hits album in 2002, O'Riordan put on the brakes. "I said to the boys, I can't turn the clock back, my children are going to be small only for a while, I want to stop this. I want you to go ahead with your lives, don't wait for me. I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm certainly not going on the road and not back into the band, not now. I don't want to be the sad old rock star who's had too long away from the kids."

Instead she spent time with her husband, former tour manager Don Burton , and had another child. The family moved to Toronto to be near Burton's ailing mother, and O'Riordan wrote songs when the mood struck her between checking homework assignments and cooking dinner.

"It was great to just suddenly find myself sitting around looking up at the sky, counting the stars, wondering 'Will I ever go back? I don't know. But right now I'm enjoying this moment.' It was a beautiful four years."

It was also a fruitful four years, as "Are You Listening?," recorded in bits and pieces during that interval, demonstrates.

Forsaking the harder musical and political edges that had marked the Cranberries later -- and less successful -- albums in favor of odes to O'Riordan's family, "Listening" is meditative and optimistic. It features more of O'Riordan's first instrument, piano, and showcases different sides of her multifaceted voice, from dusky croon to sculpted howl to ecstatic yodel.

Hopkins, who played on the album and anchors O'Riordan's new band, which comes to Avalon on Monday, was surprised by some of the turns O'Riordan took during recording. "I think it would've been easier for her to go on the same path, but she's gone somewhere different, and I think that's probably because she's experienced so much of life's pains."

First single "Ordinary Day" is a gentle prayer for 2-year-old daughter Dakota. Icy piano rocker "Black Widow" is a choir-filled outpouring of emotion in response to the illness and death of her mother-in-law.

But as the up-tempo "Loser" proves -- with its snappy backbeat and tuneful sneer -- O'Riordan has lost neither her gift for penning a melody that whistles around in your head after one listen or the sass that fueled the band's more aggressive side.

"It's a fresh sound, but it's something that people can recognize at the same time," says Ron Bowen, program director and morning drive-time host of WXRV (92.5 The River).

"I think a lot of people who liked the early Cranberries material are linking with this record because in a way we're on the same page in life," says O'Riordan of fans who have started families and begun to recognize their parents' mortality.

She's also grateful for those fans who aren't on quite the same page, at least chronologically, including Avril Lavigne and Natasha Bedingfield , who have cited her as an influence. "It's very flattering, but it does make me feel like 'How many more lines have I around my eyes?' " says O'Riordan with a laugh. Her crow's feet also spring to mind when kids approach her at shows and say, " 'I was 6 when my mom used to play your music,' and I'm thinking "[expletive]!' The penny dropped."

Because there was no animosity in the band's split -- the other three members have begun separate music projects -- O'Riordan says the door isn't closed on a reunion. "But," she says, "we'd want to be apart for 20 years or something, you know? And it would have to work. Like, the Police are totally selling out, they're massive. So if you're that hot it's great, but then if you're not it doesn't work. Maybe one day [fans will say] 'Hey man, [the Cranberries] were cool, let's go!' Or it might be like, 'Who?' "