There couldn’t be a better time than right now to start a Cranberries tribute band.
The Irish band’s late frontwoman Dolores O’Riordan may be gone, but her voice has gained a new lease of life on social media recently.
Perhaps this has been prompted by Netflix’s use of the band’s 1993 single Dreams in smash-hit drama One Day earlier this year.
Plus, now that The Cranberries’ albums are being rereleased on vinyl for the new generation, countless covers of hits like Linger and Zombie are being posted all over social media platforms TikTok and Instagram.
Whatever the cause, it seems the youth have collectively decided to let the 90s icons linger in pop culture 30 years after they made it big.
@margauxbeylier this song is so hard for me to sing so here is the one & only linger cover i’ll ever do #fyp #linger #thecranberries
And to Glasgow-based Emma Gabarda – the lead singer of Scotland’s only Cranberries tribute band – this resurgence of her favourite band feels like kismet.
Cranberries fan’s journey to Dundee gig
In 2017, Emma made the brave decision to relocate from her native France to Glasgow aged 32, after falling in love with the city on holiday. Since then, she’s made a living singing, working as a publicist and dabbling in digital marketing.
But it was just last year that she teamed up with Croatian guitarist Darko Tomic to launch The Faithful Departed, poignantly named after The Cranberries third studio album in homage to their late lead singer.
And this weekend the multicultural four-piece – including Italian drummer Tony Corio and Scottish bassist Del Murray – will play their debut show at Church Dundee.
“It would be really cool if lots of young fans wanted to come to the gig off the back of this new popularity,” muses Emma.
“We’re all professional musicians, we all know what we’re doing, but this gig in Dundee will be our first with this project, so it’s going to be interesting to see who’s coming, and what they’re expecting.”
Cranberries’ music ‘accessible to anyone’
In its current form, the setlist is a mix of the band’s biggest hits, as well as Emma’s favourites – Ode To My Family, Salvation and Just My Imagination – and some deep cuts.
“I’ve listened to the Cranberries all my life and I was singing their stuff in my bedroom for years, but playing these songs with musicians made me realise how rich the music is,” she explains.
“There’s a lot of harmonies, a lot of different layers in the music. And they’ve got a good mix of pop and rock, so it’s all accessible to anyone.”
Demand high for Scotland’s Dolores
After putting the band together in November 2023, Emma soon discovered that The Faithful Departed were Scotland’s only Cranberries tribute act.
“We were really surprised!” she admits. “There’s a Cranberries tribute in Italy, and one in Ireland. There’s a new one in England, they’re quite recent. But that’s all.”
And in a perfect storm of limited supply and refreshed demand, the fledgling outfit has already booked shows in Ireland and across the UK.
“We really didn’t think it was going to be this big this quickly,” laughs Emma. “We only have one photo of us!”
But although it’s just coming to fruition now, the idea to put together a Cranberries tribute band has been in the back of Emma’s mind for a long time.
“I grew up in the south of France and in the 90s and early 2000s, we were listening to a lot of Scottish and Irish music,” explains Emma.
“The Cranberries, U2, The Corrs, Texas – all that stuff was huge in Europe. When I was 15, I started taking singing lessons, and at 19 I had a boyfriend who was in a band, so I became a singer!”
Emma discovered talent for ‘yodel singing’
As a teenager, Emma discovered that her natural singing voice lent itself well to the type of music she was listening to anyway, and she soon discovered she had a talent for the type of ‘yodel singing’ which made O’Riordan’s voice so distinctive.
“The music is so unique, there’s nobody else who sings like her,” says Emma.
“You close your eyes and you know it’s her. That’s what I love most.”
Aside from her voice and her haircut – which she insists was her signature style before she embarked on The Faithful Departed – Emma doesn’t consider herself to have much in common with songwriting savant O’Riordan.
“I’m not very good at the writing part,” she says humbly. “The singing is my work.”
But she reveals she would have loved to sit down with O’Riordan to talk through her songwriting process.
“You might think, if you only listen to a couple of songs, that the Cranberries are just another pop rock band, but actually there’s a lot of songs that are very political and deep – not just Zombie,” she observes.
“I would love for her to tell me her songwriting process, what she wanted to achieve, what kind of message she wanted to send.
“I think she’d have a lot to say about the world and society in general.”
The Faithful Departed will play Church Dundee on Saturday April 6 at 7pm.
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