Eyes Open
- Snow Patrol
- Band Name: Snow Patrol
- Record Label: A&M / Polydor
- Release Date: May 9, 2006
- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
Eyes Open is composed of broad, obvious songs with broad, obvious hooks, aimed straight for the hearts of as many people as the band can manage. All of this would be bad, horrible even, if it didn't work. But it does.
-
Eyes Open dives headfirst into mainstream waters, hoping the strength of its intentions will be visible through the glossy bombast. It is, but it takes some surface-scratching to reach it.
-
Snow Patrol's hungry rock sound only gets bigger and better this time around.
-
80Snow Patrol are on their way to becoming essential. [May 2006, p.120]
-
80Snow Patrol are poised to eclipse Coldplay as pop's greatest anthem-makers.
-
With thickly distorted, deeply rumbling guitars blazing, the U.K. band comes roaring out of the gate on its fourth album, intent to hammer home the point there's more to it than the Coldplay-like romanticism of its 2004 breakthrough single, "Run." [16 May 2006]
-
75The band's naked ambition would be offputting if it didn't come wrapped in such resounding choruses.
-
70As enjoyable as anything this calculated can be.
-
If there is one tiny flaw on this disc, it's the way some of the songs, after teasing us with intensifying waves of sound, tend to drift to an ending prior to attaining their destination.
-
Eyes Open shows you the elements of a successful record, without the heart that ultimately makes it a success.
-
66If Eyes Open lacks the vivacity of its breakthrough predecessor, it remains an assured example of a band still paying more than lip service to the notion of rock music as a vital pop form.
-
Gone completely is any passing trace of the grubby, US college rock that made them so beloved underground when the real world wasn't taking notice. In its place, is an awful lot of big, blustery ballads.
-
To sum them up in one word, "reliable" would be the most appropriate.
-
60Eyes Open hardly furthers Snow Patrol's rote one guitar attack, and repetition exposes Lightbody's interpretations of love's little hiccups as a tiring experience. [Jun 2006, p.108]
-
60So much of Eyes Open is nearly, but not quite. [Jun 2006, p.114]
-
60Over 45 minutes, it feels monotonous and preposterously self-pitying, but in controlled doses, it bests all the rest of the U.K.'s current wave of post-Coldplay bedwetters. [Jun 2006, p.145]
-
Stronger songs could have elevated it past mere prettiness.
-
60Eyes Open takes the formula of the last album and magnifies it.
-
Big, bold, cleverly-executed, thoroughly hollow stuff.
-
Anything that was either subtle or complicated has been erased to provide ready-made heart-on-sleeve love songs.
-
Snow Patrol got it all wrong with this album. [Summer 2006, p.93]
-
40Overreaches. [Jul 2006, p.88]
-
40Unfortunately, singer Gary Lightbody can't resist playing it safe. He slides comfortably back into the stadium-size ballads and mushy MOR formulas that scored on their million-seller, Final Straw.
-
40Snow Patrol suddenly sounds like a cross between Goo Goo Dolls and Train.
-
40Eyes Open is far from a horrible album. It’s easy to listen to, it’s melodic, and it’s well-read. But you’re a strong (or naïve) listener if you can get past the calculation, the number-crunching, the crassness with which Lightbody has taken aim at the MySpace demographic.
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 33 out of 43
-
Mixed: 8 out of 43
-
Negative: 2 out of 43
-
8
-
[Anonymous]10
-
TimK10This album is wonderful. It has some of the most beautiful songs ever written, yet it's far from soppy. Great music in its prime.