Album review

Snow Patrol
A Hundred Million Suns (Polydor), £12.99
****

Not a lot of people know this: only Frank Sinatra’s My Way has spent longer in the UK charts than Snow Patrol’s monumental 2006 anthem Chasing Cars (85 weeks in the singles chart).

Yet Snow Patrol rarely get credit.

They’re often derided as inferiors of Coldplay or Keane, dismissed as soppy balladeers with an eye on the main chance.

But that view totally ignores their background as perennial indie underachievers, a band almost no one took any notice of until 2004’s breakthrough single Run propelled third album Final Straw into multi-million sales territory.

2006’s Eyes Open, a mighty slab of sleek but emotional stadium rock, consolidated that success but a decade after Songs About Polar Bears, their debut album, A Hundred Million Suns may well see them reborn as the successors to their natural antecedents, U2, who also knew relative obscurity
until a mid-career surge made them into contenders.

This is a hugely confident album. Band leader Gary Lightbody may attract a bewildering amount of flak for being rather uncharismatic
(Lightbody’s no Bono and that’s how he likes it) but he isn’t just about great tunes and lyrics that connect; he’s also not afraid to experiment.

Away from the more straight-forward guitar pop of paean to Belfast, Take Back The City, and the exciting, strafing rock of Please Just Take These Photos From My Hands, the micro electro-ballad, If There’s A Rocket Tie Me To It pulses with robotic sighs, while The Golden Floor comes across like Elliott Smith (a recurrent influence) fencing with Timbaland.

Still, none of this prepares you for the 16-minute, three-piece, final track The Lightning Strike, which bursts with clamorous orchestral volleys but never loses touch with the band’s warm embrace of melody.

It makes Coldplay’s recent prog attempts all sound rather embarrassing. Snow Patrol: the finest stadium rock band in Britain? No contest.