The Cranberries' Fergal Lawler has admitted it has been difficult to listen to old studio recordings of the band's late singer Dolores O'Riordan.
The drummer made these comments while speaking to the i Newspaper, as the band announced plans to release an extended 40 track reissue of their 1994 album, No Need To Argue, which has seen the remaining bandmembers delve into the archives, including recording featuring O'Riordan.
In January 2018, Dolores O'Riordan died after drowning in a hotel bath due to alcohol intoxication. She was 46 years old.
"Dolores is speaking in-between takes. And it was hard", Lawler said. "There’s a lot of fond memories from that time. But I maybe didn’t expect that to be as difficult as it was".
Elsewhere, the Cranberries guitarist Noel Hogan called the revisited album a "lovely legacy" and "a celebration of someone’s life".
Speaking about her death, Hogan said that it was the "biggest shock of my life" at a time when she felt she was happy and settled following the breakdown of her marriage, and after revealing that she was sexually abused by a family friend during her childhood.
"That was one of the harder things to deal with, because I felt that the old Dolores had come back," he said. "There was a few years in there where even her and I fell out for a while. But we patched that up. And she’d met a guy who was really good for her, really nice".
The Cranberries sold more than 40 million albums, with O'Riordan's vocals heard on a number of hits, including Zombie, Dreams and Linger.
Back in 2021, the Cranberries celebrated what would have been Dolores O'Riordan's 50th birthday with a new music video. Find out more here.
