Snow Patrol - A Band That Shouldn't Be

After reading countless articles or reviews, and hearing countless accolades from friends in support of the up and coming band, Snow Patrol, I was expecting one hell of a super group. What I got was probably the most derivative, cliché, and gimmick laden group this side of the entire fucking galaxy. If it was possible to sleep standing up it would have been the best alternative to actually being there, since at least when you sleep you don’t have to listen to some mongoloid from Scotland praising the current state he’s in and saying “y’all.” If you like Snow Patrol and credit them as “indie rock” or “the next big thing” I’m sorry, you have no taste in music, in fact, I would wager you are at the very least partially deaf. Snow Patrol’s only redeeming quality is their brief catalog of music—that they actually choose to acknowledge—which limits the duration of their concerts.

Snow Patrol is a band you are probably just hearing about - even if the first album you've ever seen in stores is actually their third full length release (with a myriad of EP’s and singles as well). Funny, I don't remember hearing about this band before 2004—ever—and this IS that HOT new band I’ve been hearing SO much about. When you listen to this “band” you start to wonder if it’s really a band at all; if these three or four (or however many) guys really care about the music or if they are a manufactured product. Well, we might finally have an answer to that question.

Snow Patrol’s first two full length records were released on Jeepster, a small, relatively obscure label home to a band that doesn’t sound like everything else: Belle & Sebastian. Care to take a guess as to what label their “critically acclaimed breakout record” was released on? Yes, it is a major American corporate entity. Why yes, they did release Lindsay Lohan’s last record—to use the term record loosely. Snow Patrol released their hit record with the backing of Universal Records, and the sense of overproduction is overwhelming. I haven’t even listened to the album, but if their performance was any indication it is clear they are nothing without their studio.

The bane of a major label contract is overproduction. Snow Patrol are attempting to play some dream pop or pseudo shoegaze, they’ve even been compared to My Bloody Valentine, but for whatever reason they felt the need to use effects and a sampler, which do nothing for their formulaic, water downed, poor mans “modern rock.” Whatever genre they are trying to play, or consider themselves a part of, they only sound like one genre live: generic pop. The band plays on stage with somewhere in the neighborhood of a billion flashing lights; exploding in an orgy of discombobulated epileptic nightmare behind the pale white band members. As any magician knows, it’s all about misdirection—the smoke and mirrors were fooling the entire audience; throwing their hands in the air as if this orgasmic lightshow and goofy smiling was an amazing spectacle to behold, as if the band had somehow turned the dirty water that is their music into the finest of wines.

Since I haven’t listened to their latest record—and never will—I can only guess as to the meaning of the lyrics of the songs, and why I felt as if I was participating in a twisted telethon to raise money for Southern Baptists in need of a constant war against homosexuals or some other ecclesiastical affair. While there was no clear lyrical agenda, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Gary Lightbody—even his name sounds like some Christian evangelist; staring intently in your eyes through a television, sweating profusely, poised to sell us something that might cure cancer or reinstate an Anglo hegemony—was putting on a Christian Rock concert at the expense of every lighthearted and naïve attendee. Even when his lyrics made no sense, or were just ridiculous—such as my favorite line, “God only knows what Brian Wilson was thinking…”—the crowd seemed to go wild, waving their hands in the air at their messiah. Was anybody actually listening to the words of the song? Was anybody even listening to the song, for that matter? This guy could have been confessing a string of serial rapes and murders while picking his teeth clean of human bone fragments, nobody would have noticed.

It’s the kind of music that can’t offend anybody because there’s no substance to it; it’s a bunch of guys going through the motions of caring about their music and their message. I guess if I had somehow convinced the entire world my band was something special I would probably ride the wave too, because what’s the point of having a message and making awesome music when you don’t get a fat check at the end of the day? If anybody actually listened to what Gary Lightbody and the rest of his band was saying it would be impossible to like the band. Nothing they're saying has any weight, nothing about them has gravity. They’re just floating through the music industry making a “splash” thanks to a couple extra thousands of dollars in the studio and a serialized aesthetic. Snow Patrol is just an image, with ironic T-Shirts admonishing drug use while simultaneously singing a song with references to ecstasy; it’s a façade.

That’s the very nature of Snow Patrol; they aren’t really a band—at least not anymore. They’re just a product and an image: with flashing lights and pretty colors, with minimal epithets, and songs referencing Brian Wilson. Without a producer mixing their product the songs all begin to bleed into one another, and at that point, the bright lights and eerily jovial Europeans attempt to make up for the lack in audial quality. It’s the age old trick of misdirection, and boy did it ever work on a sold out crowd in Dallas this evening. Thankfully Snow Patrol will eventually fade into obscurity, and the next big thing will replace them. A different name, the same sound, and that all too loving crowd will be back in Dallas waving their hands for their new God, whether they realize it or not.