Blimey, what a turn-up. Having effortlessly avoided Snow Patrol for the whole of 2006, my curiosity has finally been pricked...
Favourite Music Of 2006: No. 1
1. Snow Patrol, Eyes Open
The big track: Chasing Cars
Hg’s choice: Hands Open
I had little or no interest in this band before the start of the year. Indeed, I’d decided that their murky, sludgy music was pretty much unlistenable. However, a guest slot by Martha Wainwright on their latest album piqued my curiosity. I bought it in May, a couple of weeks before I left my job, and I've been listening to it constantly ever since. I've played it incessantly - on average, I've probably listened to the whole album at least five times a week - and decided back in September that it was inevitably going to be my year-end favourite. 2006 will always be Career Break Year for me and Eyes Open is the definitive Career Break Album.
How does this compare to Joan As Police Woman, then? Will I be listening to it in twenty years' time too? I'm not sure, but then this selection of favourites isn't predicated exclusively on potential longevity. It's more about how much enjoyment and satisfaction I gained from specific albums over the course of the year. I wasn't the only person who liked it so much, either: it surprised many by becoming the biggest selling album of the year in the UK. It's a great demonstration that mass popularity don't always have to mean lowest common denominator.
It's both heartening and surprising that it has enjoyed such commercial success. In one sense it's quite a traditional album about the transcendental power of love, but its exploration of the territory is dark and intense. How many dinner parties have been conducted in complete obliviousness to the dread and horror floating sweetly out of the loudspeakers in the background? Or am I being snobbish and underestimating an innate understanding within the psyche of the British public that love isn't always sweetness and light?
The thing I didn't understand about this release for such a long time is that it's almost a concept album. I haven't seen this being picked up on in mainstream reviews in the same way that it has been highlighted for the My Chemical Romance album, for example. The tracks have a definite story arc, charting the highs and lows of the protagonist's relationship. The sometimes oblique lyrics require careful attention and probably the best way to approach it is to go through the songs and follow his progress.
You're All I Have tackles the bewildering realisation of the power that his lover has over him. Half frustration, half ecstasy: on the one hand "under your skin feels like home" but on the other "there is a darkness deep in you, a frightening magic I cling to". When he sings that "it's so clear now that you are all that I have, I have no fear 'cause you are all that I have" at first it sounds touching but then you begin to wonder how much this bothers him.
Hands Open addresses the difficulty of maintaining a relationship in which "my tongue misbehaves and it still keeps digging my own grave". He understands that wanting everything to be alright doesn't automatically make it so: "It's not as easy as willing it all to be right, gotta be more than hoping it's right". Evoking the spirit of Sufjan Stevens, he's wishing that his lover will "collapse into me, tired with joy". It's a wistful but ultimately optimistic song.
Chasing Cars is the big single, but it remains beautiful, however many times I've heard it. It's utterly solipsistic ("We'll do it all, everything, on our own; we don't need anything or anyone"), with its call to "lie with me and just forget the world". I think this song is both about the first flush of love ("All that I am, all that I ever was, is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see") and about its durability ("Just know that these things will never change for us at all").
Shut Your Eyes continues the theme, as he imagines a shared place of retreat: "And when the worrying starts to hurt and the world feels like graves of dirt, just close your eyes until you can imagine this place, you're our secret space at will". It's a seductive kind of isolation: cold outside, warm and intimate within, with a subtle hint of passion ("Somewhere cold and caked in snow, by the fire we break the quiet, learn to wear each other well").
It's Beginning To Get To Me covers the breakdown of that passion and intimacy: "And it's beginning to get to me, that I know more of the stars and sea, than I do of what's in your head, barely touching in our cold bed". Characteristically, the song is his attempt to salvage the situation ("You are the only thing that makes sense, just ignore all this present tense"), with its soaring finale: "We need to feel breathless with love and not collapsed under its weight".
You Could Be Happy describes his thoughts after the end of the relationship: "Somehow everything I own smells of you and for the tiniest moment it's all not true". With an admirable lack of bitterness, he addresses his ex-lover's future: "Do the things that you always wanted to, without me there to hold you back, don't think, just do; more than anything I want to see you go take a glorious bite out of the whole world".
Make This Go On Forever starts off with the slow progression of piano chords and turns into a smouldering marching song as the awful reality of the breakup starts to dawn on him. The lyrics are more impressionistic than previously, betraying his emotional state of mind, and the music builds to a peak and then falls back as he confesses that "I don't know where to look, my words just break and melt, please just save me from this darkness". It feels like the album's lowest point.
Set The Fire To The Third Bar (the Martha Wainwright duet) sees him imagining "the distance from here to where you'd be". Sitting in a bar, he returns to their shared hideaway in his memory ("After I have travelled so far, we'd set the fire to the third bar, we'd share each other like an island") before reluctantly re-acknowledging the distance between them: "And miles from where you are, I lay down on the cold ground and I pray that something picks me up and sets me down in your warm arms".
Headlights On Dark Roads sees the narrative take an unexpected turn. I think it might be the only moment of self-pity on the album, as he walks away from the bar of the previous song down a dark road and imagines himself being hit by a car: "Headlights before me, so beautiful, so clear. Reach out and take it, 'cause I'm so tired of all this fear". Musically it's about as angry as Snow Patrol get and the lyrics are the most repetitive.
Open Your Eyes is more reflective, with a swelling bassline, as the lyrics become impressionistic again. Is he imagining himself in the car crash with his lover or has it actually happened? "The anger swells in my guts and I won't feel these slices and cuts; I want so much to open your eyes, 'cause I need you to look into mine". I'd always wondered why the earlier track Chasing Cars was so curiously titled, but now I think it might be a premonition of this later event.
Finish Line is another motoring-related title. He's clearly out of the car, lying on the ground and unable to move: "The earth is warm next to my ear, insects' noise is all that I hear, a magic trick makes the world disappear." Then "a distant motorcade and suddenly there's joy" as the car is discovered. As his discoverers deal with his injuries ("cold water cleaning my wounds"), there's a moment of ambiguity as "I hear my name and I wake".
Is he just coming round from concussion, or has it all been - like a bad TV soap ending - just a dream? The final couplet doesn't clarify anything, but at least leaves us with a message of hope: "I think the finish line's a good place we could start; take a deep breath, take in all that you could want". It's not entirely clear whether they have a future together or not, but it's a conclusion of sorts and a new beginning.
That's the end of the original edition of the album. There are three bonus tracks too: an untitled space-filler with background voices and birdsong (at the scene of the crash?), followed by In My Arms and Warmer Climate. I wonder if they were added to ensure a happier ending for their main character?
In My Arms seems to be about the rebuilding of the relationship. It might be set in the post-crash hospital: "You look so fragile I could break, but I try to hold myself together for the both of us". No doubt is left as to his intention to ensure that the relationship will ultimately survive: "Please let me hold you till I know we are both through this, I couldn't lead another day without you here in my arms".
Warmer Climate is a nice ending. It seems to spring from a gentler frame of mind, with more playful sentiments: "Maybe its the warmer climate, maybe I'm a smarter primate, maybe its the beer I'm drinking, maybe I've stopped over thinking". Having said that, the apocalyptic lyricism is there to the last, with a return to the solipsism of the earlier tracks as he imagines the two of them eclipsing literally everything else:
"The universe just vanished out of sight and all the stars collapsed behind the pitch black night and I can barely see your face in front of mine, but it is knowing you are there that makes me fine. But the universe is just an empty space and all the stars can disappear without a trace; I'm so glad that this has taken me so long, 'cause it's the journey that made me so strong."
In some ways, it's reminiscent of Kate Bush's The Ninth Wave (the second section of the best-selling Hounds Of Love album), which is based on the distinctly non-mainstream exploration of the thoughts of a drowning man. There's the same innocent beginning, the heaviness and intensity of the middle and then the relative lightness of the final moments. It's much more accessible though, with standalone songs that make sense out of context and a radio-friendly surface sheen that must surely be the primary reason for the album's commercial success.
I've now gone back and listened to earlier Snow Patrol material and I'm still not terribly enthusiastic about it. With a bit of time, I'm sure I can learn to get into it, but there's no doubt that the production values of this latest release are very different to their previous offerings. I gather that certain sections of the existing fanbase aren't impressed, but I don't have much sympathy with them. When I listen to Eyes Open, I don't hear any indication of creative compromise in the way they've been able to make their music appeal to wider audience.
There's so much more I could say about this album. About chord progressions that make my chest swell and my throat feel tight. About the way that the lyrics achieve a sublime balance of straightforwardness and elliptical suggestion. About Gary Lightbody's utterly enviable voice: bruised yet optimistic, wavering yet bold, vulnerable yet confident. About the way the album's cover art barely registered when I first saw it, yet now it's one of my favourite images of last year. However, it's time to stop. I've said enough.
Eyes Open is available at a Tesco, Sainsbury's or Asda near you. It's a beautiful world.
Favourite Music Of 2006 permalinks:
Intro, 30-26, 25-21, 20-16, 15-11, 10-6, 5-2, No. 1
Posted by Hg on Friday 12 January 2007 at 11:58.
Received 6 comments so far.
Comments
Having, I will shamefully confess, come to their big hit 'Run' very late and found myself utterly addicted, I bought - well, downloaded, okay - 'Eyes Open' a couple of weeks ago and have been listening to it a lot ever since. It's ... comforting. Which I suppose isn't a word you're supposed to use about modern music, is it?
A great countdown of your favourite music once again, Hg. I always look forward to these. Surprisingly, thanks to - once again - the curse/blessing of downloading, I have either owned or heard a surprising number of this year's choices, but will be investigating a number of others thanks to your recommendations.
I will also be desperately trying to get into that Joan As Police Woman album, which just washed right over me and barely registered the first few times I listened to it. Sigh.
Comment by An Unreliable Witness on Friday 12 January 2007 at 14:01.
Mike - if you've managed to avoid the ubiquitous presence of Chasing Cars on apparently every radio and TV station this autumn, you've clearly been tuning in to a completely different set of channels to me.
Vaughan - "comforting" is absolutely the way it felt. It seemed to fit every circumstance, whether I was driving to the beach in blazing July sunshine or doing battle with rainy Christmas traffic jams in December. Odd that an album potentially so depressing should be so... sustaining.
Caroline - no, you get a big kick up the arse for being such a smarty pants.
"About chord progressions that make my chest swell and my throat feel tight."
This happened to me almost every time I saw them live (7x summer of 2005, supporting U2). It was before Eyes Open was released, so I got Final Straw when I got back from the tour. It didn't quite do it for me, but 'Run' was still a great tune. I remember raving about them and making you watch them when Live8 was on, but their performance fell flat and you didn't like 'em.
Yeah, that's the first link in the first paragraph above, my impressions of them at Live 8. I'd completely forgotten about that, only re-discovered it when I was searching for the second link.
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