Snow Patrol’s last album, ‘Eyes Open’ was a huge step forward and showed a lot of growth in song writing. Although I think ‘A Hundred Million Suns’ continues the band’s growth I have to kind of wonder if they haven’t hit their peak yet.

Besides the few strategically placed upbeat tracks, the record has stretches of mellow and slow tempo songs that actually feel like they are playing to a adult contemporary audience instead of the younger, discover-new-music crowd of the past.

“Take Back The City” is one of the most lacking tracks on the album and in my opinion and poor choice for lead single but it is good to know that it only goes uphill from there. The song has a lot of parts that are good but they tend to feel disjointed and forced. “If There’s A Rocket…”, which is actually the first song you’re introduced to, is more of the traditional Snow Patrol and when the track builds and leaps in intensity with the chorus intro line “A fire, a fire, you can only take what you can carry” you feel right at home with the new album. “Crack The Shutters” has hints, and at times feels like it wants to copy, the mega hit “Chasing Cars”, however the band refrain themselves from ripping off their own songs. This will be another huge hit for the band when it gets put on the radio.

It would be hard to talk about this album  without mentioning the epic final song, or should I say 3 songs. “The Lightning Strike” is broken into 3 parts totaling a little over 16 minutes in length. No matter what you feel about the rest of the songs on this record, it’s hard not to fall in love instantly with the impressive closing piece. “What If The Storm Ends” is a continual build which has the drums lightly pounding for it’s duration and singer Gary Lightbody crafts the melody in such a way that hangs in the perfect balance with the musical tension. After the first part fades out, “The Sunlight Through The Flags” fades in with a light and bouncy piano that contradicts the mood we just came out of but reflects the sections sunny title. Again, part 2 fades out and has a clear ending before making way for “Daybreak”.

Besides the obscene-ness in “Disaster Button” the album as a whole is very decent and worth your time exploring. There are a lot of new things, mostly subtle, that the band does to expand their sound and overall it works well. Going back to the opening paragraph, I don’t think the band has hit their peak yet, this only the beginning.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Full Reviews. 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.