I was anxious to hear their sixth studio album. There are some artists that never receive particularly 'over-zealous' album reviews no matter what they do and Snow Patrol is one of them. Also reviewers tend to compare Snow Patrol to Coldplay and U2 all the time, which I think it's not realistic.
But once put in those shoes there's little Snow Patrol can do to change the opinion but toI was anxious to hear their sixth studio album. There are some artists that never receive particularly 'over-zealous' album reviews no matter what they do and Snow Patrol is one of them. Also reviewers tend to compare Snow Patrol to Coldplay and U2 all the time, which I think it's not realistic.
But once put in those shoes there's little Snow Patrol can do to change the opinion but to pursue their own way. Snow Patrol on 'Fallen Empires' is still a special band, still indie and alternative. Also, they are again commercial, all that makes them different from the mainstream others - it's a blend that is usually hard to achieve. Although apparently Lightbody had a lack of creativity ideas while doing it- but it shows only a little. The fact I like on 'Fallen Empires' is that they've never fallen into the trap called 'commercial mainstream' even after the upswing of their career in 2009 and 2010. But, they will probably be successful, again. The album brings what is the essence of Snow Patrol but coated differently. Most of the time. The rest of it, they sound just like old Snow Patrol from the first two albums' period. A bit too much, if you ask me. Gary Lightbody holds the steering wheel of the band very tightly, too tightly to get the best result. "The Garden Rules", "Life-ning", "Those Distant Bells" and "The President" they are all good but Snow Patrol should know better in 2011. These songs all sound like we've heard them at least a dozen times before and all in better versions. If the other part of the album wasn't quite exciting, fresh, a bit experimental and different: it would be 'a standard (average) album sounding like a standard Snow Patrol', but the discrepancy between these two is too obvious that makes the album's main characteristic as 'unbalanced'. 'Berlin' is an instrumental 'para-ra ra ra' experiment which fits into the whole new direction of the 'most of the time' songs, but I'm finding hard to see the purpose of it. Playing the album I got the feeling that Snow Patrol need somebody new, an outsider, to tell them Gary Lightbody in particular, that 'less is more' and that pursuing his own ideas into the 'Wild West' makes them go a step back on the record that supposed (and would be) a step forward. Closing ' Fallen Empires' on say, 9-10 tracks would get far better result. Maybe it's time that Garret Jacknife Lee stays their 'sixth member, friend and a brother', even a collaborator and a co-producer because at the moment he seems too much into Lightbody's 'Wild West' trip which very much needs outsider's push onto the right road.
The nine of the 'most of' songs are more or less really good. Expect the unexpected. The winning formula if you go exploring music, getting new, fresh, even odd ideas. You may like some songs or not, but liking them or not makes no difference on how good they are in their own ways (and structures) sometimes sounding like U2 OK yes.
This goes particularly to 'Called out in the dark', their first single (with hilariously funny video) and my favourite, 'Fallen Empires'.
Snow Patrol are on their finest on the second single 'This Isn't Everything You Are' beautiful ballad at their best, but lacks sufficient strength to launch it to the stratosphere unless it ends up at the most dramatic moment in some of the hit TV series, 'The Good Wife' perhaps. "New York", "In the End" and "The Symphony" round the great ones. On the latter, the most refreshing is a strong female backup vocal, as it is on 'I'll Never Let Go' .
Snow Patrol are on the right track for future, with the small stall and they need a small shovel to clear out too much snow that's blocking their doorstep.… Expand