For the most part this does work well and as a collective piece, Psychodrama does a wonderful job crafting a compelling and believable construction of Dave’s life. With simple beats relying heavily on piano backing tracks, Dave falls back on his lyrical power to carry the album. It feels tonally inconsistent with a lot of the other material here too and unfortunately the British rapper doesn’t quite have the vocal range to carry the heartfelt singing segments. It attempts to showcase a lighter side to Dave’s persona that doesn’t quite nail its mark, especially after such a powerful song. It was always going to be a tough ask for the final two tracks to close out the album after the excellence of this track but ‘Voices’ is particularly problematic. All of this culminates in a shocking ending to the tale before being soothed over with the gorgeous vocals of Ruelle. Telling a story about a lady named Lesley, Dave takes us on a lyrical journey, shining a light on toxic masculinity, abuse and depression. This 11 minute track is quite simply stunning. The album itself then continues along, spinning its web of tight, but somewhat simple, compositions before reaching the crescendo of the album, ‘Lesley’. The tracks continue through to ‘Purple Heart’ which ends with another sketch involving the therapist to reflect on what we’ve listened to thus far. From here, Dave begins the album with ‘Psycho’, an introduction to his hard-hitting rap style and simple piano-driven melodies. With thematic relevance and a hard-hitting look at life in general, Dave spits raw intensity across the breadth of his album, topping it off with an amazing crescendo in ‘Lesley’.īefore we get there though, the album opens with an interview sketch with a therapist who informs us of the time and date. Hopefully fans will, too.Making his studio-album debut, British Rapper Dave storms onto the scene with an honest and heartfelt album full of powerful lyrics and clever wordplay.

It sounds like The Cranberries found some kind of closure in this last record.

On it, O’Riordan, who recorded demos for the album’s 11 tracks before her death in January last year, sings: “Fighting’s not the answer/ Fighting’s not the cure/ It’s eating you like cancer/ It’s killing you for sure.” The band have spoken about how O’Riordan was singing about leaving many of the negative things in her life behind. “Wake Me When it’s Over”, the third track on In the End, could be “Zombie”’s twin. She was deeply affected by the deaths, and would no doubt have been devastated by recent events in Northern Ireland as well. “Zombie” was a protest song written by the band’s late frontwoman Dolores O’Riordan after two children were killed by IRA bombs – was released. There’s a cruel irony that the release of The Cranberries’ final album should come just a week after journalist Lyra McKee was shot dead by the New IRA during a riot in Londonderry.

Dave psychodrama vinyl