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NPR Music: Tiny Desk Concerts
Tiny Desk Concerts from NPR's All Songs Considered features your favorite musicians performing at Bob Boilen's desk in the NPR Music office. This is the AUDIO only archive.Are you a fancy A/V nerd and need video? Visit our new Tiny Desk Concert video channel. Eye-popping video and all of the music you've come to expect.

The Cranberries: Tiny Desk Concert

By Stephen Thompson
Published February 23, 2012 at 8:45 AM MST

There's got to be some sort of equation to determine the precise moment for which the most possible people feel nostalgic at a given moment — the sweet spot would likely fall somewhere between 15 and 20 years prior to the present. That way, young adults can attach to their early childhood, while those approaching middle age can bask in the glow of their college years. (Hopefully, those in their early 30s have forgotten the worst of junior high.) All of which is a long windup to this immutable truth: When we decided to bring The Cranberries to the NPR Music offices, an absolute honkload of people showed up to watch.

The Irish group's alternately pretty and strident early- to mid-'90s hits ("Linger," "Salvation," "Zombie," et al) have aged well, as have the band members themselves, so now marks a perfect time for The Cranberries to break a lengthy hiatus. Wisely, though, singer Dolores O'Riordan and company aren't turning a blind eye to the past: This five-song Tiny Desk Concert includes early hits "Linger," "Ode to My Family" and "Zombie," and if the band played them out of some sort of grudging sense of obligation, you'd never know it. Naturally, fresh material also popped up on the landscape, as The Cranberries showed off two solid songs ("Tomorrow" and "Raining in My Heart") from a new album called Roses, which comes out next Tuesday.

Thoughts on a Cranberries Tiny Desk Concert will no doubt range from "The Cranberries?" to "The Cranberries!" But wherever you reside on that spectrum, it's worth visiting — and, appropriately enough, revisiting — this charming performance.

Set List:

  • "Linger"

  • "Tomorrow"

  • "Ode To My Family"

  • "Zombie"

  • "Raining In My Heart"

    • Credits:

    Producer: Bob Boilen; Editor: Michael Katzif; Videographers: Michael Katzif and Doriane Raiman; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; photos by Kainaz Amaria and Michael Katzif/NPR

    Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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    Tiny Desk Concerts
    Stephen Thompson
    Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
    See stories by Stephen Thompson