SNOW PATROL

Snow Patrol overreach on the grandiose Fallen Empires

by Matt Ashare

Snow Patrol, Fallen Empires (Universal)

UNSOUND EFFECTS: Snow Patrol add electronics to their bag of tricks

Before I stick a metaphorical shovel into the sprawling mess that is Fallen Empires, the sixth album by the Belfast-by-way-of-Glasgow fivesome Snow Patrol, I do want to point out that I'm not an avowed hater when it comes to grandiose, slickly produced, arena-reaching rock from the British Isles. For example, I remain a loyal U2 fan (when they're good), and retain an abiding respect for both Bono's good works and his band's willingness, from time to time, to break with formula, as they did to fairly stunning effect just over twenty years ago with Achtung Baby. And, as annoying as I tend to find the bleeding heart-on-my-sleeve ruminations of Chris Martin, every now and again there's a Coldplay single that catches my ear, even if Parachutes, their 2000 debut, is still the only album by that particular band I can manage to sit through from beginning to end. Oh, and just last summer, I dug out a "Singles" collection by the Verve, a self-important ‘90s Brit-rock band with a frontman, Richard Ashcroft, who has a Mick Jagger-sized ego and the lips to go with it. That disc — This Is Music (yeah, that's actually the title) — was in fairly heavy rotation for a good month or two around my house.

       So I come at Fallen Empires with a reasonably high tolerance for dudes with charming accents from dreary climates who feel empowered to wrestle dramatically with the human condition in the context of a three- to four-minute pop song. If it's got a solid stadium-ready guitar hook or a wistful enough chorus, I'm fully willing to pull out the Bic lighter app on the iPhone and wave my hands in the air with the best of them. (Well, maybe that's going a bit too far for a cynical romantic like me, but you get the point.)

       Snow Patrol are big little band who aspire to reach such heights and appear willing to do whatever it takes to get there, even if it means standing in the shadow of Coldplay, a position they occupied with some degree of dignity beginning in 2003 with Final Straw. That was the band's big, international breakthrough, and it came after nearly a decade of toiling rather charmingly in the Scottish indie underground with such ’90s luminaries as Belle & Sebastian. (Seriously: Go back and listen to 1998's Songs for Polarbears.). "Final Straw," an aptly named album if ever there were one, sounded like the successful last ditch effort to take a proven, if borrowed, formula straight to the bank that it was. And it established Snow Patrol as the next best thing to Coldplay — a semi-sweet pill for anyone for whom one Chris Martin just wasn't enough.

       But frontman Gary Lightbody and guitarist Nathan Connolly — Snow Patrol's two main mouthpieces — have apparently been harboring loftier ambitions. After all, they've been handpicked to open for U2 on not just one, but two world tours. When it comes to lofty apprenticeships, it doesn't get much better than that. Indeed, if you've been following the Snow Patrol saga on Lightbody's blog (it's not something I recommend, but you can get the basic gist of it from a mercifully condensed rundown of the basics on the band's Wikipedia entry), the band set out to break with their own conventions on Fallen Empires — to deliver, in Lightbody's words, "twenty songs" that Connelly promised were "very different from each other."

       Sounds like a recipe for success, right? Of the many obstacles that stood in the way was a nasty bout with writer's block that Lightbody confessed to suffering through last September in the British magazine NME. Of the several "cures" Lightbody reportedly subjected himself to, the two most effective (or is "amusing" the word I'm looking for?) were a trip to the California desert U2 made famous (that would be Joshua Tree), and Michael Stipe, who apparently played an indeterminate inspirational role as, I dunno, the band's wartime consigliere or something. When it was all said and done, Snow Patrol had their longest album to date (14 tracks clocking in at 50-plus minutes) in the bag.

       Fallen Empires absolutely delivers on Lightbody's promise to throw a few bold new wrinkles in the thickening Snow Patrol plot. And, as anybody who's read this column before knows, I admire any artist who's willing to push the boundaries, work outside of his or her comfort zone, and/or take the kind of left-hand turn that may leave some fans scratching their heads. I also happen, for the most part, to be a firm believer in the less-is-more aesthetic, which, paradoxically perhaps, often comes into direct conflict with boundary pushing.

       And so it is with Fallen Empires. Working with producer Jacknife Lee (the dude who manned the board for R.E.M.'s "Collapse Into Now" last year), Snow Patrol have added a heavy dose of electronics to their previously guitar-centric approach to rock in a hard place. If I'm not mistaken, Coldplay did much the same on their 2011 album Mylo Xyloto, but that's probably just a coincidence. Besides, the more obvious touchstone for "I'll Never Let Go," the emotionally wrought epic track that opens an album of emotionally wrought epics, is Achtung Baby-era U2. Lightbody sings like a wounded warrior lost on a street with no name, as he navigates his way through undulating sequencers, icy synth tones, and dark-toned industrial guitar riffs.

       While the album's title suggests that Lightbody may have had geopolitics on his mind when he finally overcame his writer's block, he hasn't really changed his tune all that much when it comes to subject matter. "I'll Never Let Go" is right in line with the kind of romantic torment and earnest outrospection that have been his stock in trade all along. "Your words shook me right out of a daydream/I was lost somewhere cold and it looked haunted/I was asking strangers but no one understood me/I was drenched in sweat when your words came to me," he croons to someone whose "house" has literally or metaphorically "burned to the ground" in "I'll Never Let Go." The disc's title track, another synth-heavy concoction, is a slow build through a relationship in ruins ("Harm me most when it's light/The thought of you don't sit right/I need the darkness, a death grip embrace") that leads to a chaotic climax with Lightbody repeating the line, "We are the light," over and over again.

       There are echoes of the old, uncomplicated Snow Patrol here — "Called Out In the Dark" opens with a nice little acoustic guitar riff before the synths arrive and take it to a mournful place somewhere in the neighborhood of that oh-so-’80s film The Breakfast Club, and "This Isn't Everything You Are" is a hope-filled ode to a broken friend centered around chiming guitars that explode into full-blown powerchords on a suitably anthemic chorus, with string embellishments thrown in for a little extra touch of melancholy. But in (over)reaching for something boldly universal, Snow Patrol mostly end up in the general area of the generic, a place where style trumps substance and nobody really goes home happy. Perhaps that's the point.

       I'd leave it at that if it weren't for a modest little acoustic tune, "Lifening," that nails the best of what Snow Patrol are capable of midway through Fallen Empires. Against a backdrop of fingerpicked guitar, spare piano chords, and a nice string arrangement, Lightbody finally gets personal and reveals all he's ever wanted from life: "waking up in your arms"; "Ireland in the World Cup"; "words of reassurance"; "to share what I've been given/Some kids eventually/And be for them what I've had/A father like my dad." The list goes on. Come to think of it, kind of reminds me of something the Verve might have done.
http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2012/jan/18/snow-patrol-overreach-grandiose-fallen-empires-ar-1620557/