Good Weather For Airstrikes

I posted on the lead-off single from Snow Patrol’s upcoming album, Eyes Open, last week, but the full album has since leaked and contains even more of the same goodness that “You’re All I Have” hinted at. As a whole, the album possesses a decidedly major-label feel, absolutely dripping in production flourishes, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and Snow Patrol’s been heading in that direction since even before Final Straw. In fact it kind of feels like Interscope had a little leftover money in the budget, so the band decided to just fuck it and throw in as many bells and whistles as possible, adding strings (”You Could Be Happy”), a full choir (”Shut Your Eyes”), and even a duet with Martha Wainright (”Set Fire To The Third Bar”). The latter, a haunting ballad, is one of my two favorite tracks on the album, along with the much more rocking “Hands Open”. “Hands Open” even name drops Sufjan, actual lyric: “Put Sufjan Stevens on/and we’ll play your favorite song/’Chicago’ bursts to life/and you remember [trails off…]”, which is weird, but I guess kind of cool also. Finally, “Chasing Cars”, which has been a live staple at recent shows, is the leading candidate to be this album’s “Run” and follows the same formula as “Run” (sparse beginning + emotional climax + excessive melodrama), though it doesn’t come close to eclipsing the original’s epic beauty. All in all the album is great, though I’m not sure if I can say it surpasses Final Straw yet, but Eyes Open sees Snow Patrol finally finding their niche as the UK’s next great arena-rock band, somewhere in between Coldplay and Muse. Again, as I said in the last post, if you’re an Interscope representative and you’d like these tracks removed, just email me and I’ll take them down without resistance.

NOTE: MP3s have been removed at the label’s request. Color me owned.

MP3s:
“Hands Open” - Snow Patrol [removed]
“Set Fire To The Third Bar” (ft. Martha Wainright) - Snow Patrol [removed]
“Chasing Cars” - Snow Patrol [removed]

ALSO, I’ve made all of Bloc Party’s videos available for direct download in iPod-compatible format over at Videoteque, so be sure to head over there and grab those. And comment or something, we’re getting pretty lonely over there despite the good traffic flow.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 28th, 2006 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.