Album Review: Snow Patrol "A Hundred Million Sons"

Snow Patrol / A Hundred Million Suns
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A song-by-song review of the new Snow Patrol CD A Hundred Million Suns, which set set for release on October 28:

If There's A Rocket Tie Me To It - Sets the tone for the album with an elegiac vibe and some striking similarities to U2's "Beautiful Day" - not a bad thing, mind you.

Crack The Shutters - Sounds like it could have been on Final Straw, except for the rather upbeat lyrics: "Crash the shutters open wide/I want to bathe you in the light of day", etc. Looks like Gary's finally gotten over whoever the last two albums were about.

Take Back The City - The first single, which I featured on the site a couple weeks ago. It's got an immediacy that makes for a great choice of lead-off single and encapsulates the "Snow Patrol sound" quite succinctly.

Lifeboats - A lone acoustic guitar begins strumming, augmented by a lo-fi drum beat and Gary's treated vocals. Nice textures are worked in and out; atmospheric synths just barely audible, a funky bass line, sweeping faux-strings, building to a chorus that arrives around the time most songs are ending.

This track, more than any other on the record, begs for a stark Gary vocal rather than the trademark octave harmonies that Snow Patrol use much to much. Truth be told, this technique has been their secret weapon on the last couple records, filling out the sound of the vocals without being immediately recognizable to the average listener, but it verges on overkill when applied in this setting.

The Golden Floor - Another mellow track driven by a click-clack drum machine beat and minimal musical backing - a nice acoustic guitar riff repeats and the song ends just as I was hoping for it to finally take off. On first listen, it honestly felt like the song was only a minute long, but it clocks in at 3:22. Weird. For a song that never quite takes flight, it sure seems to fly by quickly.

I bet the next tune's a rocker!

Please Just Take These Photos From My Hands - From the title, I'm expecting the Gary we've all come to know and love: endlessly heartbroken, looking inwardly and back at the same time. And, blammo, it builds to a crashing chorus that you just know's hoing to sound great live. The guitar work recalls The Edge and one can't help think the band is really trying to beat Coldplay at the "let's try sounding like U2" game. Again, not a bad thing.

Set Down Your Glass - A soft tune that the girls are gonna go absolutely nuts for. I bet it gets released as a single at some point. It's no "Chasing Cars", but it's better than just about anything else one hears on the radio these days.

The Planets Bend Between Us - another mid-tempo tune that begins with a beautifully simple piano part over which Gary's single (no harmonies, yay!) vocal track ebbs and flows plaintively. Why do I imagine teenage couple slow-dancing to this at next year's prom?

Eight tracks in and we're tied at four rockers and four soft tunes.

Engines - Hmm, make that five slow tunes.

Disaster Button - Chugging single guitar, an f-bomb, things are looking promising for some balls-out rock action. Sure enough, it quickly kicks into gear, evening out the rocker-to-slow-tune ratio. Oddly enough, the chorus bears some pretty obvious melodic similarities to "Take Back The City".

The Lightning Strike - Okay, when I saw the running time listed as 16:18, I figured there just must be twelve minutes of dead air at the end of the song and then, oh I dunno, the sound of somebody closing a door or something (remember the '90s, when every band had a hidden track on their CD?). As it turns out, the song is actually over sixteen minutes long. It isn't so much a single song, though, as two or three song fragments that never quite go anywhere. At sixteen minutes, it's a bit of a frustrating listen, but an interesting endeavor, nonetheless.