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After existing in relative obscurity for a few years, Snow Patrol stumbled on a successful formula with their third album ‘Final Straw’. So successful, that after honing their sound on ‘Eyes Open’ the band became heavyweights alongside the likes of Coldplay in peddling arena anthemia. According to front-man Gary Lightbody ‘A Hundred Million Suns’ takes the band in a new direction; which is strange, as for want of a better phrase, it sounds as ‘Snow Patrol’ as they come. But realistically a band of their calibre only has two choices: polish the gloriously expansive intimacies your fans delight in or do a Coldplay style ‘Viva la Vida’ and risk being branded weird.
Commercially tried and tested ‘A Hundred Million Suns’ is as you’d expect immediately viable. The opening two tracks, ‘If There’s A Rocket Tie Me To It’ and ‘Crack The Shutters’, announce themselves with the confidence of a band who aren’t about to entertain the idea of risk and only progress by applying further polish to a highly polished sound. But it’s a sound that works and Snow Patrol are on top of their game with an album, the central theme of which is about a relationship in progress. So it should come as no surprise that regardless of the enviable turn of phrase in ‘Take Back The City’, acoustic empathy of ‘Lifeboats’ and solitary tear stained narrative of ‘The Planets Bend Between Us’ Snow Patrol risk falling on their own lovelorn sword.
With little other than higher production values to distinguish song from song and even this album from the last, the bulk of its intended poignancy is simply diluted, tracks become fillers and regardless of how good they are simply serves to fill the Snow Patrol vacuum. Even the shuffling handclaps of ‘The Golden Floor’ complete with backmasking and their epic 16-minute three songs in one opus ‘The Lightning Strike’ cant save the album from treading water, albeit to Olympic standards. Ultimately, the blow by blow descriptive narrative becomes too much, the radio friendly sincerity infuriating and ‘A Hundred Million Suns’ tiresome.
On top of their game they might be but personally I’d rather see them fail exploring new ground than pour a large lonely mans glass and face agreeable death by Snow Patrol.
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