Snow Patrol - Final Straw

Genre rock Publisher A&M External Links Official Site Interscope

It's hard to shake the criticisms that Snow Patrol are Coldplay wannabes while watching and listening to the band's video for "Run." The guitars feature a very similar ascending chord progression, swelling the surrounding instruments and singer Gary Lightbody's voice to the bursting point that is not unlike Coldplay's big hit "Yellow." It also doesn't help that the video utilizes a similar slow-motion feel as the one for their UK compatriots' did. The song is still awesome, but it is impossible to not think of Chris Martin while listening/watching this.

So it's a good thing that "Run's" video wasn't my initiation into the band's look and sound and I can forgive them the attempt at the brass ring. Rather it was "Spitting Games," a spirited song about unrequited adolescent love that features a great beat and a killer chorus. Though the video is a bit silly and flat after the first couple of views.

So why am I going on about the band's video instead of their music? Well, the band's label has recently released the album in the new DualDisc format, featuring the album as it originally was on the CD side, and the album again, this time remixed in 5.1 surround sound on the DVD side. The DVD side also features the videos for "Chocolate," "Run," and "Spitting Games," along with a Sessions@AOL interview and performance.

Snow Patrol members Gary Lightbody and Nathan Connolly perform a stirring acoustic version of "Run," that finds Lightbody singing the song with far more gusto than he does on the album. Lightbody's voice is so strong, that I'd have to guess that seeing Snow Patrol live delivers more of an impact than their album does.

Though there isn't any flawed tracks per se on Final Straw, the album seems to drown under its own moroseness midway through and beyond. Once you get past "Run," you're in for a morass of downtrodden tunes that never lets up.

The interview for Sessions@AOL shows Lightbody and Connolly in a jovial way. They joke and laugh, and Lightbody even suggests a TV show idea wherein celebrities are shot into the Pacific Ocean from cannons. It's this sort of playful humor that is severely lacking in the music of Snow Patrol, and is sorely needed to save them from their self-imposed mopery.