SNOW PATROL w/o The Duke Spirit @ Metropolis

By Katie Seline - Wrong Side of the Bed - 09/12/2006

I have a confession to make: I am a sucker for pop culture. I dance around my room to really bad pop music, I will stay home to watch prime time television such as The O.C. and Grey’s Anatomy, and my favourite movie is, to this day, Reality Bites. Does that make me a big lame-o? Probably.

At the risk of getting beaten up by my peers at the station, I am willing to admit that Snow Patrol’s latest album, Eyes Open, was one of my favourite of 2006. I picked it up while my iPod was in the shop and all I had was a &5 CD player from the Australian version of K-Mart, two other CDs and a hell of a lot of time on a bus from Sydney to Brisbane. I listened to the album once, liked it, shelved it for my $2 copy of Neil Young’s greatest hits, and then rediscovered it after my backpacker love affair inevitably came to an end and I was feeling that kind of angst that only cheesy pop love songs and a lot of wine out of a box can relieve. My man Gary Lightbody has gotten me through some lonely nights.

When I first heard Snow Patrol was coming to town, I played the whole cool indie kid thing and told everyone I was going to see opening act The Duke Spirit -- who, by the way, are amazing. When The Duke Spirit cancelled the gig the week before, my cover was blown. I found myself at Metropolis with the only friend I could get to come to the show with me (bless her heart) amongst a slew of 15-year-old girls who all looked like Marissa Cooper. The band finally took the stage and began the show to a bombardment of shrill screams I thought I could only possibly hear at a Backstreet Boys show in the mid 90’s. Then things started going wrong -- well as bad as they could possibly go at a show like this. Lighbody’s guitar broke during the first song. Tech guy comes on stage to fix it. It breaks again. Lightbody is given a new guitar. That guitar breaks. Tech guy returns. Things go well until the end of the song. Repeat. Eventually a guitar is found that works. Lightbody explains that everything on this tour has broken. We all wonder why a band that has sold roughly half a million records has crappy gear.

What impressed the pants off of me was Lightbody’s composure during all of this, and how his vocals and the sheer power of his voice completely made up for the lack of guitar. It definitely sounded like something was missing, but the music certainly didn’t sound bad to any extent. I’m not even sure most of the kids there knew what they were missing. The rest of the set went off without a hitch, the band playing a really nice combination of songs from their new album and their first release Final Straw. Songs like "Run" and "Open Your Eyes" maintained the haunting quality that they had when backed up by visuals in the season finales of shows like Grey’s Anatomy and ER, and the band totally rocked out playing songs like "Chocolate" and "You’re All I Have". If I had actually paid for this show I would safely say without any hesitation that I would have gotten my money’s worth.

I have always wondered why it is that making money, getting played on Top 40, and licensing your music to television means selling out to a lot of people. When Snow Patrol released Final Straw, they were considered by many as an indie act to be reckoned with. Upon their latest, more polished and produced release, they are now considered pop and have lost a lot of their clout in the indie community. I ask myself all the time, is it pop because it sounds a certain way? Or is it pop because it is popular? In the case of Snow Patrol I think it is a little of both and I believe that there is a lot on the album that shows the band as a more mature indie act that has been overlooked due to the success of "Open Your Eyes" and "Chasing Cars". A good example of this is their duet with Martha Wainwright, "Set The Fire To The Third Bar". For some reason since I have bought the album back in the summer time, I have not been able to stop listening to it or at least enjoying it when I do hear it and to me, that is far more important than whether or not far too many other people like it as well. Call me lame if you want. Call me a sell-out if you wish, but I like what I like and I will never be ashamed to admit that.

Snow Patrol returns to Metropolis on March 30th with OK GO and Silversun Pickups.

[Tune in to Wrong Side Of The Bed every Wednesday from 5pm to 7pm.]