Album Review: A Hundred Million Suns by Snow Patrol

The band's appeal also owes a good deal to Gary Lightbody, who maintains his status as the least famous frontman of a very famous band. He's the boy next door, a musical Everyman who's just as average looking as Chris Martin and only half as desperately self-effacing. Looks may have little to do with an artist's music, but such appearances help ground Snow Patrol's music, even while "Take Back the City" and "Please Take These Photos from My Hands" reach for the same stars that U2 routinely grab.

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Snow Patrol have finally done what their harshest critics have been urging them to do for years and set fire to their guitars - however, this was for creative, not career-ending reasons. Similar experiments (including recording wine glasses filled with water) apparently dominated the recording of A Hundred Million Suns. However the finished album sees the band reverting to base instincts with the chug-paced, heart-tweaking, stadium-size choruses of Take Back the City and Lifeboats.

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Set in a dilapidated Veterans Administration hospital, Article 99 may be the first medical melodrama that isn’t about dedicated physicians performing life-saving acts of valor. It’s about dedicated physicians not performing life- saving acts of valor: Their hands are tied by the crisis in veterans’ health care — the calamitous lack of funding, the red tape, the increasingly prevalent policy of refusing to cover conditions (such as heart problems) that aren’t directly related to military service. To function as doctors, the movie’s heroes have to become outlaws in their own hospital.

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Review Summary: A Hundred Million Suns is another middling affair from a by-now-mature pop act, and now might be the time to ask why. That Snow Patrol would achieve worldwide success with 2006’s Eyes Open was never exactly pre-ordained. 2003’s Final Straw had become a big deal in their native UK and Ireland, allowing for a worldwide release the following year, but the likelihood of the twee, introverted rockers going global amidst one of the hottest summers on record could was always going to be a long shot.

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Let It SnowBy Jason KillingsworthListening to Snow Patrol won’t put hair on your chest. Even on the band’s more propulsive tunes, crunching guitars are softened with a gauzy, silvery edge. But such caveats are mostly beside the point because these Irish rockers never set out to jab a fork in anyone’s eardrum. Singer Gary Lightbody has a moody streak and a beautifully expressive voice, which sounds exquisite on the band’s newest record, A Hundred Million Suns.

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Let It SnowBy Jason KillingsworthListening to Snow Patrol won’t put hair on your chest. Even on the band’s more propulsive tunes, crunching guitars are softened with a gauzy, silvery edge. But such caveats are mostly beside the point because these Irish rockers never set out to jab a fork in anyone’s eardrum. Singer Gary Lightbody has a moody streak and a beautifully expressive voice, which sounds exquisite on the band’s newest record, A Hundred Million Suns.

Full Review >>