Sometimes you'll walk out of a show thinking, wow, I never knew that band was so good. The Cranberries show at the Molson Amphitheatre tonight wasn't one of those times. If you want to hear the Cranberries at their best, put one of their disks on your CD player at home. That's not to say last night's show wasn't good. Certainly the 13,000 screaming fans seemed to think it was. All the ingredients were there and the set was certainly solid. There was an extravagant, cutting edge light show. The stage was set with giant geometric figures for a backdrop, one of which - best described as a cube with one side slanted - rotated to reveal a grand piano. Whenever the band broke into one of their hits, singer/ bandleader Dolores O'Riordan would hold her microphone to the audience encouraging them to sing along. This is something that has become an almost obligatory act at all big concerts, it seems. O'Riordan even changed her outfit three times (We didn't know rock stars still did that.) and trounced about the stage with great energy despite a massive brace on her left leg. Unfortunately she gave no explanation for this mechanism which gave her leg the appearance of something out of a Terminator movie. And while Tom Jones fans have been known to shower the artist with undergarments, O'Riordan's fans showered her throughout the night with cute, little stuffed animals "I'm taking this one back to Ireland with me," she said at one point holding up one of the gifts. "And this one's a Porky Pig reject from hell." Backing her up, guitarist Noel Hogan appeared to be playing every number - even the slow ones - as though they were full tilt rockers, while Feargal Lawler's drumming style began to resemble that of The Who's Keith Moon more and more as the evening progressed. This might help explain why he trashed his drum set and hoofed a hole in the bass drum at concert's end. As for the fans, the energy level was high, they joined in at every opportunity to sing along and the mosh pit looked to be going full tilt - even during the slow numbers, which begs the question: Are these fools even listening to the music? Yet where the Cranberries failed was in taking the audience for a ride. Instead of building up to some kind of peak, O'Riordan and her bandmates chose to intersperse such hits as Linger, Ode To My Family, Salvation and Free To Decide with their lesser-known material, rarely building any kind of momentum. Granted, they did finish off their set with their biggest song, Zombie, which was a crescendo of sorts. On the whole, the music was played loud and the sound was big, filling the entire amphitheatre like rock and roll music should. But the Cranberries have never come across as serious rockers. Their live show seemed to lose all the subtleties that make their sound so interesting and unique on CD. Jam! Rating: 3 out of 5