The Cranberries have finally released Live at the London Astoria II, 1994, a previously unissued concert recording that finds the Irish quartet at a pivotal moment—fresh off the success of their debut and weeks away from the album that would make them global stars.
Live At The London Astoria II, 1994
Listen to Live At The London Astoria II, 1994 on Spotify · album · The Cranberries · 2026 · 15 songs
Issued September 4 via Island/UMe, the 15-track set is available as a limited-edition 2LP molten lava vinyl, standard black vinyl, CD, and digital. It draws seven songs from 1993’s Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?—including “Pretty,” “Linger,” and “Dreams”—and six from the then-unreleased No Need to Argue, among them “Dreaming My Dreams,” “Daffodil Lament,” “Empty,” and an early live take of “Zombie.” Two non-album cuts round out the night: “Liar,” later heard on the Empire Records soundtrack, and “So Cold in Ireland,” a B-side to “Ode to My Family.”
The show took place at London’s Astoria II after the band had returned from a successful U.S. run and a short Christmas break. Drummer Fergal Lawler recalled the night as a homecoming of sorts. “It was such a buzz playing in The Astoria,” he said. “This was our first concert back in London after achieving such success in America. We were delighted to see a few of our hardcore fans at the front of the stage. I think we felt proud that all our hard work had finally come to fruition.”
Recorded between the chart-topping debut that produced “Linger” and “Dreams” and the commercial explosion of No Need to Argue, the performance captures a young band playing with unexpected poise to an intimate crowd. Contemporary notices have been strong. NPR included it among its Best New Albums; Glide Magazine called it “a brilliant mix of strong, stirring emotions and ecstatic enthusiasm,” noting that the group already displayed “the confidence many groups take decades to develop.” SPIN observed that the set finds the band road-testing songs that would soon become catalog cornerstones.
The inclusion of “Zombie” is particularly striking. Seven months after this concert the single would top charts in multiple countries and reach No. 1 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks. It has since accumulated more than 1.8 billion YouTube views and remains one of the most-streamed songs of the 1990s.
The full track listing is:
Pretty
Dreaming My Dreams
Linger
Ridiculous Thoughts
Daffodil Lament
How
Everything I Said
Not Sorry
Waltzing Back
Dreams
Zombie
Liar
So Cold in Ireland
Empty
Still Can’t…
More than three decades later, Live at the London Astoria II, 1994 offers a clear snapshot of The Cranberries just before they became one of Ireland’s biggest musical exports—an evening when the songs were still new and the band was only beginning to grasp how far they were about to go.
