Snow Patrol
Final Straw

THE REVIEW

Sometimes I don't understand why certain specialized media spend so much time and ink praising bands, regularly presented as "rock prophets" that have little to nothing phenomenal about them. Even the latest Coldplay album, almost unanimously hailed, wasn't all that great. Snow Patrol, a band composed of four Northern Irish guys who met in Scotland at the University of Dundee, had to work really hard to gain that visibility which they only achieved in 2003 with their third album "Final Straw" in Great Britain.
Previously, two other albums were released on the Jeepster label (the same as Belle & Sebastian and, if I'm not mistaken, Arab Strap), namely the unlucky "Songs For Polar Bears" (1998), and "When It's All Over We Still Have To Clear Up" (2001): this "Final Straw" is thus the album that revealed them to the English public, so much so that a year after its release, it is still in the top 20 of the British charts.
The secret mix proposed by this promising band is a guitar rock that nods to certain sounds typical of American bands (such as Dishwalla) but with that typically British approach of seeking catchy melodies without "selling out" to easy compromises. Indeed, the album, bolstered by a single like "Run" (an epic, majestic and paradoxically "subdued" power ballad, vaguely reminiscent of Coldplay's "Yellow"), seems to take an unexpected turn compared to the song that leads it: one would expect an album of acoustic/electric ballads, given the excellent result obtained precisely from "Run," where the sound of guitars seems to fall like a rain of fire. However, excluding the initial "How To Be Dead," a delicate (but disoriented and fragmented) ballad à la Dave Matthews, the first tracks are all fast-paced and very short (barely exceeding three minutes, and sometimes not even that), strong and immediate but not particularly memorable. However, the other two singles stand out, "Spitting Games," with a chorus that strikingly resembles My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless," and "Chocolate," where the quartet's pop vein emerges powerfully. From these two tracks, not counting "Run," one might think that the band's evolution is still in progress, as if the best is yet to come. Certainly, in some aspects, Snow Patrol still need to refine themselves, starting with the singer Gary Lightbody's voice, who almost never dares to step away from low and/or pseudo-whispered tones, not even in tracks where the guitars bite.
The lyrics mostly concern the singer's personal experiences and occasionally venture into social themes, but nothing that hasn't already been written or that doesn't come across as rather predictable: from this point of view, they still have something to learn from their label mates, certainly much more "eccentric" in terms of lyrics. However, this doesn't detract from the fact that the album is very pleasant and interesting, both in moments when the band takes a breather and seeks intimate emotion ("Grazed Knees," nocturnal and solitary, the concluding "Same," a classic 3/4 ballad also inspired by early Coldplay and even Pink Floyd), and when they accelerate the rhythm and hit the instruments hard ("Tiny Little Fractures" with a glam rock beat sustained by a classic T.Rex style riff, and the stormy "Wow" which starts with a beat accompanied by acoustic and then explodes in the refrain).
Ultimately, a band that is growing and can deliver even more remarkable things: we'll be waiting for them.