Snow Patrol -- Final Straw

6/10

Mostly harmless. That's about it. If Coldplay is watered down Radiohead, Snow Patrol is watered down Coldplay. Final Straw takes few risks, reaps few rewards, but suffers few pitfalls outside of the times it is insufferably boring. Snow Patrol is a pop-rock band whose drums are sometimes played by a very polite drum machine, and at others, played by a very polite drummer. He doesn't seem to want to disturb anyone with fills or...variations in rhythm. Boom-boom-tap, boom-boom-tap the whole song. That's about it. The best I can say for the bassist is that at least I can hear him a few times. With pop-rock like this, that's not always the case. The guitars are mostly simple strum-strum, slightly distorted power-chords, backed by some simple leads. Every now and then they get a little crunchier, but only for show, and without attitude. I have to say, coming from down on the musician-flooded bayou, most people who have picked up and studied any of the instruments featured here for a few weeks could hammer this album out. "Virtuoso" these performance are not.
I do own Final Straw, though, and the reason is that when the band do swing for the fences with the absolutely enormous, spark-reigniting-a-dead-universe chorus of "Run," they hit the ball not just out of the park, but across the street into someone's apartment window. The song popped up on multiple TV shows, but it was its appearance in a late 2005 episode of Rescue Me's second season that absolutely blew my mind to the point that I had to blog about it here all those years back. Nothing else Snow Patrol hits even comes close to the fence, but the second half of the album, which "Run" announces, is stronger than the first, with a bit of a darker and more sophisticated atmosphere, some nice use of strings, and a bit more complex guitar work. All that said, you can throw Final Straw on as background music, turn it loud and hold up your lighter for "Run," then turn it down again, but not quite as low, and get back to whatever it is you were doing for the remainder.


2003 A&M
1. How to Be Dead 3:21
2. Wow 4:02
3. Gleaming Auction 2:04
4. Whatever's Left 2:39
5. Spitting Games 3:46
6. Chocolate 3:02
7. Run 5:54
8. Grazed Knees 2:55
9. Ways & Means 4:47
10. Tiny Little Fractures 2:28
11. Somewhere a Clock Is Ticking 4:32
12. Same 3:54