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The Cranberries reunited last fall after a lengthy hiatus, for successful North American and European tours. Their formal label, Island Records, hopes to join in on the party by issuing Bualadh Bos, billed as the band's first-ever live album (though compiled and released without the band's participation or prior knowledge). It's actually more of a live compilation, and a rather bizarre and uneven one at that.

The first seven tracks, for instance, were culled from am intimate studio concert in 1994, comprised entirely of songs from their debut album (with the only real "hit" among them being the song "Linger"). The rest of the disc is scattershot, and comprised mostly of hits recorded at considerably larger venues. While the first seven tracks sound fairly good, the recording quality begins to differ afterwards; several of the songs almost have a bootleg quality about them, as the mixes are sometimes uneven. Furthermore, going from recordings taken from a small performance studio to ones recorded at large arenas makes for quite a jarring transition.

It's hard to imagine anyone but the die-hard Cranberries fan enjoying this, as only six or seven of the fifteen tracks here are actual hits (with a whopping nine of them being from the first album alone). While it's hard to see this as anything but a cash grab from their former label, I wonder why they couldn't have assembled a more cohesive live package.