Track Listing

1. Ode To My Family
2. I Can't Be With You
3. Twenty One
4. Zombie
5. Empty
6. Everything I Said
7. The Icicle Melts
8. Disappointment
9. Ridiculous Thoughts
10. Dreaming My Dreams
11. Yeat's Grave
12. Daffodil Lament
13. No Need To Argue

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8079 in Music
• Released on: 1994-10-04
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com
It was a tough act to beat when Irish group the Cranberries released the follow-up to their debut disc Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can't We, an interesting and intimate album highlighted by the memorable hit "Linger." Critics chided that Everybody was timid in nature both musically and lyrically, but No Need to Argue quickly changed all that. The 1994-released effort was decidedly more confrontational, instantly evident by the lyrics, inspired by the Irish conflict, in their hit "Zombie." In her trademark sharp alto, frontwoman Dolores O'Riordan sings, "In your head they are fighting/With their tanks and their bombs/and their bombs and their guns." Since anger is more difficult to embrace than love, many fans were initially disappointed with the tougher stuff, but those who stayed discovered a much more emotionally layered effort. --Denise Sheppard

Customer Reviews

Powerful Voice and Great Songs
"No Need to Argue" is the best selling album the Cranberries have released before their current hiatus. The album contains two of their finest singles "Ode to My Family" and the controversal "Zombie".

Though their music hardly can be called folk, there is an umistakeably influence from traditional Irish Music. On some of the strongest song find this influence obvious.

The album opens with beautiful "Ode to My Family" and the album continues with three more great songs. "I Can't Be With You" is one of the few upbeat rockers on the album - a catchy tune. Like "Ode to My Family" "Twenty One" is just beautiful and the powerful voice of singer Dolores O'Riordan is bound to hit you on the haunting "Zombie".

You may easily get the feeling that you're in the middle of listening to one of the few perfect albums in rock, but unfortunately the next handful of tracks do not live to the opening four. Though well-performed the songs are simply not as good.

Luckily the high standards are reset with O'Riordan's waltzy ballad "Dreaming My Dreams". "Yeat's Grave" is, inspite of its dark lyrics, quite uplifting.

The hymn-like title track is a fine closing track to the solid, but slightly uneven, album with some really great songs and the powerful voice of Dolores O'Riordan.

Epic
This is seriously a great album.
it's epically good. It's in my top ten favorites of all time.
Every song on here is awesome.
On top of it being an excellent CD everytime i hear it all I think about is the 90's...
and the 90's were awesome, especially for music.

twister: intensely irish emotion
Delores O'Riordian has a voice like no other, perfectly suited for the upfront Irish anger of this 1994 album. Single digits ahead of the St Valentine's Day accord and its imperfect afterlife, O'Riordian and the Cranberries lament--this *is* the dominant tone--the things that are wrong with families, fathers, lovers, and the hatred that has made 'the Troubles' so linkable an expression with Northern Ireland.

The front lady's severe, alto and usually unaccompanied voice drives each song forward with self-propelled force. You either love it or hate it. Not too many simply liked this album. It was one of those musical offerings that invoked strong response from across the spectrum of listeners.

I mark the album's release date (1994) as the year I arrived in England to study. It represented one of my first moments of exposure to European (sort of ) pop music and the edge that often distinguishes it from its cross-Atlantic counterpart. A decade and change later, I can still remember where I was when I first heard several of these tracks.

The album is well constructed. The first track begins with O'Riordian's famous a capella 'Doo .... doo doo doo .... Doo ... doo doo doo' entrance to the spooky 'Ode to my Family.The CD ends with the eerily gripping organ intro to 'No Need to Argue'. In between comes a lineup of tunes that together comprise the kind of album that is often called 'honest', a descriptor that often means the postponement of the kind of self restraint that works in the rest of life but is not always the domain of artistry in its awful naked truth.

If this kind of transparency is a virtue--and arguably it is--then No Need to Argue represents a kind of moral pinnacle. What carries the attempt through a dozen and one titles is O'Riordian's 'I'm-not-done-yet' persistence in emoting with that beguilingly odd voice and the Irish turn of a syllable that drives it from theme to theme. She is, after all, the only vocal thing the Cranberries have got goin'. She makes the most of a monopoly.

Meanwhile, the boys in back lay down a pretty spare groove that showcases the singer up front. This is true both on the raucous/metal end of the continuum ('Zombie') as on the violin-accompanied love song side ('Dreaming my Dreams').

All this considered, I place NO NEED TO ARGUE in the category of those landmarks albums that don't necessarily wear well by keening to the common core of changing musical tastes. Rather, it comes as an archived witness to a new and slightly revolutionary sound that gripped us momentarily and for a year or two in the mid-1990s. That's no small feat.