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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Snow Patrol, who relocated to Scotland from Belfast (Northern Ireland), sounded
like a bad copy of Belle And Sebastian on
Songs For Polar Bears (Jeepster, 2000),
with the moribund Fifteen Minutes Old but also the loud boogie of
Starfighter Pilot,
and
When It's All Over We Still Have to Clear Up (Jeepster, 2001),
with the whispered psychedelic singalong of Ask Me How I Am and
the casual shuffle of Making Enemies,
aimless melodies anchored to mildly rocking rhythms that worked wonders as
background muzak.
Final Straw (Polydor, 2003), with the touching How To be Dead,
the dense, intense and dreamy Coldplay-esque Run,
the jangling singalong Chocolate,
and the pulsating march-like Spitting Games, began to converge towards
a more personal style.
They were becoming one of the most successful acts of the 2000s.
Reindeer Section was a Scottish super-group ("super" also in quantity, as it
featured fifteen musicians) assembled by Gary Lightbody of the Snow Patrol, who
borrowed members of Arab Strap, Belle And Sebastian, Mogwai, etc.
Their first album, Y'all Get Scared Now Ya Hear (Pias, 2001), was
received enthusiastically by the press, despite the fact that each song was
vastly inferior to the standards of the original bands.
Adding members of Teenage Fanclub and Idlewild,
Son of Evil Reindeer (Bright Star Recordings, 2002) delivered
more pop boredom, with the notable exception of You Are My Joy.
Gary Lightbody's fourth Snow Patrol album, Eyes Open (2006), the top
British album of the year as far as sales go,
was mostly a tedious dinner party but it also delivered some of their
most distinctive songs.
The soaring refrain of You're All I Have relies on pounding drums and distorted guitars.
The verve of Hands Open is propelled by a hard-rock riff.
The combination of rhythm and vocals bestows Shut Your Eyes with a dark
suspenseful atmosphere.
Towering over everything else, the hit Chasing Cars was
their most memorable melody, staged in a relatively empty space.
A driving rhythm also surfaced in Headlights on Dark Roads but the
refrain was too languid even by his standards.
Open Your Eyes and
You Could Be Happy are other stately melodies, the former lulled
in a lush crescendo and the latter drifting in a sparse soundscape.
However,
A Hundred Million Suns (2008) was another million-seller thanks to
the mellow piano-driven orchestral crescendo Crack the Shutters,
the rhythmic tricks of The Golden Floor,
and the sentimental ballad The Planets Bend Between Us.
It also included the lengthy The Lightening Strike.
The sprightly but tedious Take Back the City (reminiscent of the
Cars)
tried in vain to break the
routine.
Up To Now (2009) was a Snow Patrol career retrospective.
It also included a couple of worthy experiments with
funk-rock and hip-hop (Crazy in Love) and with
disco-music (Just Say Yes).
Muzak has rarely sounded blander than it does on
Fallen Empires (2012), for which they enlisted producer Jacknife Lee's
majestic ambience.
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