When It's All Over We Still Have To Clear Up - Snow Patrol

This year has seen a number of decent Indie bands hit the scene. Most of them seem to be hailing from Scotland or at least meeting in Scotland. Of course one of these bands isn’t quite as new as everyone seems to think. In fact Snow Patrol released their third album with this years hit, Final Straw. They released their debut album, Songs For Polarbears back in 1998 and it’s turned out to be a hard climb to the top for Gary Lightbody and the rest of the band. In fact it all started off in 1994 at Dundee University where the band met for the first time and started on the long road to success. I wasn’t a huge fan of the earlier albums straight away but over the ...

Well, where to begin with the Patrol? Messrs Lightbody, McLelland, Quinn and Brown have crafted an album so exquisite in its peaks and troughs that comparisons to 'Belle and Sebastian with guitars' or or american lo-fi like Pavement could never do the band justice. When It's All Over... grabs you and refuses to let go, from the opening blips and beeps of Never Gonna Fall In Love Again to the mantra like Make Love to me For Ever, the quality is the only constant. When I spoke of peaks and troughs before I didn't mean in quality; the album is full of bitter sweet tales of remorse and lost love, whether it be through the fragile acoustic beauty of On/Off ...

Snow Patrol must be one of the most underrated bands in British music. The band members hail from Northern Ireland but record most of their music in Glasgow - hence the comparisons with Belle & Sebastian. Their first album 'Songs For Polarbears' was released in 1998 to much critical acclaim but unfortunately it did not get the publicity it deserved and so the sales hardly set the world on fire. The follow up was 'When It's All Over We Still Have To Clear Up' was released this year. Their record company clearly didn't learn from mistakes with the last album and let this one slip out quietly again. Much less talented bands are ...