Album Review: Snow Patrol - Eyes Open

Rating: 8/10

Yes – ‘Run’ was just plain cheeky, wasn’t it?

Let’s be honest, the first time Chris Martin chanced upon it, he probably lunged, panic-stricken, into his pocket, wondering when exactly the villains had struck.

In the grand scheme of things, however, there are much more heinous crimes than Zeitgeist Larceny; and the good use to which Snow Patrol put their happy windfall meant that, prior form taken into consideration, they deserved to skip-off scot-free.
As a career-saver, the song’s arrival could hardly have been more heroic. All of a sudden, a bunch of terminal underachievers (whose closest brush with fame came when they shared a stage with the drummer from Belle and Sebastian) were transformed into Letterman guests, Mercury nominees and Live8 stalwarts.

Light up, light up? Abracadabra would probably have been as apt.

Looking back, though, and one should be careful not to allow ‘Run’s’ sizeable, downbeat shadow to obscure the defiant character of the band’s last album.

If Final Straw was conceived as a last hurrah, Snow Patrol had decided to go out all guns blazing. Snappy, lean, big hearted and beguilingly wired; it was a record that deserved the kind of audience it eventually reached.

What next, though? Retreat, sunburned, into the indie shade? Dig in? Or push on with a full-frontal attack?

Well, once you’ve gone round the block a few times with the fierce, supposedly pressurised follow-up (and it is the kind of record that you’ll want to spend a lot of time with), you’ll be glad to know that nothing the boys have seen on their adventures has scared them into calling off the offensive.

Eyes Open is so confident it could manage Chelsea.

Entry to the international A-list has straightened Snow Patrol’s posture. The spaces in their songs once haunted by the ghosts of Lou Barlow and Stuart Murdoch have been exorcised by a muscular, confidently modern take on the alt-rock template.
Take ‘Shut Your Eyes’ and ‘Beginning To Get Me’. The former is a graceful, sophisticated slow-burner that builds to a slyly epic, choral crescendo. The latter (did I hear someone at the back say ‘Clocks’?) shifts gears effortlessly. Both have an offhand virtuosity that simply didn’t exist on earlier Snow Patrol records. And they’re not the only ones. All through Eyes Open we come across songs and moments with a level of depth and accomplishment hitherto only hinted at.
The torturous snakes-and-ladders progress of Gary Lightbody’s romantic and erotic entanglements has always provided his band’s creative impetus – with hit-and-miss-results. Sometimes callow (if you try downing a pint at every occurrence of the word ‘dear’ in the Snow Patrol canon, you’d be well advised to call Casualty in advance), sometimes unerringly spot-on (step forward ‘An Olive Grove Facing The Sea’), our enjoyment of the band’s work has often depended on the degree to which we care about how the singer spends his Saturday nights. Thankfully the lyrics and delivery here are of a very different order. The lovely ‘You Could Be Happy’ is wrapped-up with such a lightness of touch (“Suddenly everything I own smells of you”), it practically floats away at the finish. ‘Set The Fire To The Third Bar’ meanwhile, is a duet worthy of Martha Wainwright. And, at the moment, there is no higher praise I can bestow on a song than that. Oddly, the one time Eyes Open veers dangerously into the realm of bad-old (“like a child of 25”) Gary is with ‘Chasing Cars’, the song that has been trumpeted as the album’s ‘Run’. In this kind of light-footed, clear-headed company, it seems leaden. Much more successful is ‘Make This Go On Forever’ – which shows how the huge, strings-drenched finale thing should be done.

The word ‘luck’ turns up in the Snow Patrol story with set-your-watch regularity, and it’s commonly accepted that the period when the band cashed in theirs was around the release of their biggest selling single. I’m not sure I agree. The care and detail lavished on Eyes Open seems symptomatic of people who, finally rewarded with a budget to match their ambition, are determined to enjoy this opportunity for all it’s worth. Clearly liberated, they’ve easily made the record of their career.

Perhaps it will come to be seen that it was Snow Patrol’s great fortune that success waited, until the boys themselves were ready, before introducing itself. Whatever: success and Snow Patrol make some couple now.

Published In Hot Press 30.08