Album Review: Snow Patrol - Final Straw

Rating 4/5

While not exactly drinking from the last chance saloon, there’s a definite sense of Snow Patrol needing to turn critical kudos into commercial success. Hampered in the past by a lack of record company ambition – the band themselves had to stump up the money to enter their last album into the Mercury Music Prize – they now have the not inconsiderable might of Polydor behind them, and high profile champions in BBC Radio 1’s Colin Murray and Zane Lowe. All that in place, we’re left with the trifling matter of whether Final Straw is any good or not.

Armed with a bigger budget, it might’ve been tempting for Snow Patrol to buff up their sound, but thankfully they’ve retained the rawness and fragility of old. Major labeldom has also done little to lighten Gary Lightbody’s mood, with the singer sounding as borderline psychotic as ever on ‘Wow’ which, off-kilter pop geniuses that they have a wont to be, finishes with a burst of Arabic caterwauling. With ‘Gleaming Auction’ and ‘Whatever’s Left’ equally dark and melancholic, the first impression is of a record that’ll be lapped up by the faithful but ain’t going to worm its way onto daytime radio.

Of course, first impressions rarely last with Snow Patrol and just as you’re predicting a swift return to indie-dom along come the insanely hummable ‘Spitting Games’ and ‘Chocolate’. A not too distant cousin of Doves’ ‘Pounding’, the latter could very well be their passport to Top Of The Pops-style success. ‘Tiny Little Fractures’, with its T.Rex-meets-Supergrass boogie stomp, ups the potential hit single quotient to three and proves that Snow Patrol can play the retro ‘70s game as well as the next band.

While one doesn’t like to revel in Mr. Lightbody’s misery, it has to be said that he does write exceedingly good heartbreak songs. And they certainly don’t come any more cardiovascularly damaged than ‘Grazed Knees’. “I’m broken and I’m colder than hell/I should have said out loud come back here” Gazza laments as his ventricles disintegrate in front of you. Seriously, don’t go listening to it if your pet budgie’s died recently.

While not suggesting that they start wearing robes, stripy lycra jumpsuits or Bowery thrift shop threads, Snow Patrol’s lack of discernible image means that it’ll be all too easy for a gimmick obsessed media – like us! – to ignore them.

Which would be a crying shame because Final Straw is a match for anything that’s been salivated over in the Sunday supplements recently.