In their rush to Live 8 superstardom, it’s easy to forget that Snow Patrol only enjoyed success with Final Straw after the album was strategically re-released. Now, fresh from picking up an Ivor Novello award with Gary Lightbody and co., ex-Patrol man Iain Archer is hoping for similar good fortune with the re-release of his 2004 effort Flood The Tanks.
Certainly, it’s an album that merits further attention. A gifted singer-songwriter, Archer pens numbers that are more refined than Lightbody’s, fostering guitar melodies that don’t reveal all their charm on the first listen. His voice is also more subtle, a hushed whisper that is bruised but beguiling.
For the re-release, he has re-recorded a couple of tracks and cleverly altered the sequencing, stacking the record’s strongest numbers at the beginning for ultimate impact. This latter move pays off dividends. Opener ‘Pressure Drop’ is a slow-boiler that sets the perimeters of the album itself, quickly honing in on Radiohead and Sigur Ros country. The standouts though are the summer-pop of ‘Boy Boy Boy’ (with its Indie 101 imagery, “Your heart’s on inside-out”) and ‘Summer Jets’ which touches the skeletal basslines and moody synths of classic New Order.
Unfortunately, the album wavers in the middle, lapsing into soporific melancholia (‘A Few Conclusions’) and predictable angst (‘Running In Dreams’). Yet Flood The Tanks remains a convincing work, an album that fans of Snow Patrol’s more downbeat moments will relish, and one that provides Archer with a springboard for what may turn out to be a singular career.