As a band gets more popular, they very often lose something in their sound. They become less themselves and more like everyone else. Snow Patrol’s new CD, A Hundred Million Suns, shows the band’s unique ability to avoid this problem. The quiet intensity of Snow Patrol’s music has remained unique without being repetitive, and the group’s lyrics have stayed interesting and comprehensible without becoming clichéd.
A Hundred Million Suns is the kind of CD you can fall asleep to. It is not depressing, but it isn’t loud and driving either. It does not inspire the listener to jump out of bed to achieve great things nor does it try to. It is a more contemplative, empathetic album that reaches out to that intangible feeling of searching for something more.
Lead single “Take Back the City” — currently in rotation on both VH1 and MTV — is not the best representation of this album. Though it is by no means a bad song, it sounds more stilted than the rest of the tracks on the CD. It does not have quite the same soothing pulse the other songs have; instead, a constant bass drum in the background gives the song a sense of urgency and drive that the other tracks avoid. ”Disaster Button” is also a less than accurate representation of the album as a whole. While it is less driving than “Take Back the City,” it maintains that sense of urgency that seems a little out of place, even in its lyrics: “Hit that button there / The one that just says wrong / We’ll lose our lives through all our favorite songs.”
A better representation of the album would have been a song like “Crack the Shutters Open.” Its lyrics depict a couple waking up in the morning after having spent the night together, and it is a song that one would want to listen to in similar circumstances. It also is a song to listen to throughout the day, to remind you of that sense of peace and comfort so you know what you are going back to. The chorus particularly emphasizes this — “Crack the shutters open wide / I want to bathe you in the light of day.”
Of course, while urgency may not be Snow Patrol’s usual modus operandi, intensity often is. While their songs do not often feel as though the listener is in a speeding car watching the world blur past, they often carry a certain pensive intensity that has more to do with lyrics and less to do with instrumentation. Some of their song titles demonstrate this, such as “If There’s a Rocket, Tie Me to It.” The song’s lyrics paint a picture of self-destruction in the face of loss, of the need to get out of a situation taking only what you can carry. The chorus is the most substantial verse, making up three of the song’s five stanzas. “A fire, a fire, you can only take what you can carry / A pulse, your pulse, it’s the only thing I can remember / I break, you don’t, I was always set to self destruct though / The fire, the fire, it cracks and barks like primal music.” The repetition provides a surface intensity that is underscored by the lyrics, which make the pressure more evident. A good album is one you not only want to listen to but that you get something out of — be it inspiration, optimism or empathy. Snow Patrol’s A Hundred Million Suns has a contemplative, understanding theme that demonstrates the intensity of life without overwhelming and it does so in its own style, at its own pace, without measuring itself by generic standards.
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
