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Of course, I may be being a little premature in saying this, but I reckon that if you're abstractedly bopping away to an album on first listen, it's going to be a good album. Said album is Snow Patrol's Eyes Open. I am surprised at how much I seem to have fallen for Snow Patrol without realising; I adored Final Straw, but didn't even notice how much I loved it until I realised I was still absent-mindedly listening to it three years on. Sitting down to think about it, there is no bad song on that album. To start with, "How To Be Dead" is just incredibly, unbelievably awesome. It's got no refrain, no hook, no catchy bits, just a conversation between two people rendered as lyrics and sung in a half-distracted, plaintive way that just haunts me.
Actually, this wasn't going to be a music post, but what the hell:
Snow Patrol - How To Be Dead
please don't go crazy if I tell you the truth / no, you don't know what happened / and you never will if you don't listen to me
The other underrated gem on that album is "Grazed Knees", which is about nothing more profound than a break-up, and it doesn't have a hook or chorus either, and also lingers with me into the dark.
And again, what the hell:
Snow Patrol - Grazed Knees
your breakfast will get cold / I really have to go
Everything else on it is fabulous, too; everyone in the world has heard "Run", so I won't upload that, and ditto "Spitting Games" (which I don't actually like all that much), and "Chocolate" is lovely, lovely, but the video version is actually better than the album version because it's longer. The video features a mass of frenzied people running around, waiting for a bomb to go off, trying to get the whole of the rest of their lives to fit in a very small space, and the music cuts out and fades as the bomb goes off.
Oh, it was inevitable really:
Snow Patrol - Chocolate
goodness knows I saw it coming / or at least I'll claim I did / but in truth I'm lost for words
The new album, which I am listening to for the first time at the moment, is more like mainstream pop/rock, but so far I love it. I'd heard "You're All I Have" already, of course, and also "Chasing Cars", which has the sort of emo video I would loathe if it were by any other band, but the rest is new to me and I can feel myself falling for it. This is made most evident by the fact that judging by the track lengths, it has to have been at least twenty-five minutes since I put this on, and I swear it was just a couple of minutes ago. I will upload tracks from it - if anyone wants it - once I've actually imported it.
And that would be good, as I am feeling very lacking in good music lately. I bought Keane's new album off Amazon at the same time as Eyes Open, and that's so far been a bit of a disappointment. I love "Is It Any Wonder?", which is the sort of caustic soaring song I kind of expected from them, but nothing else on the album has grabbed me. And that's a real shame, because Hopes And Fears, their first album, was probably my best purchase of 2004 (of anything, not just music!). I have no idea why I loved it so much, but during the summer months I probably listened to nothing else at all. Almost exactly two years ago, I was living on my own for two weeks, seeing no one, talking to no one, procrastinating madly while trying to study for my AS-levels and going half-crazy from the solitude. The days were too long, my parents were away and my friends all revising too, and the reason I remember it so vividly is because I was listening to "Bend and Break", a song off that album, on repeat, and writing "Love Is Not Love", and listening to that song and re-reading that story now bring the whole time back with extraordinary clarity.
My other link with Keane is, of course, the oft-reported fact that my former Biology teacher, a small, grey-haired gloriously eccentric ecologist called Rice-Oxley, is Tim Rice-Oxley's aunt. The song soon became an anthem for us all:
Keane - Bend and Break
I'll meet you on the other side / I'll meet you in the light
I miss that time. I thought that all I wanted was to leave school, and that was true pre-sixth-form - I'm so, so glad that I will never have to go back to that time, that high school is over - but sixth form was so much better and I don't know whether I did properly appreciate it. No, I think I did. It was a lovely time in my life, despite A-levels and university admissions and all the accompanying stress; I was with people doing the same things, I belonged with them, and we had two years together and it did feature such wonderful things as exploding custard powder and election campaigns and endless bags of sweets and running around with transpiring laburnams and politics and a lot of sugar. It was a good time.
Um. I was making this post to complain about how I keep getting disappointed by music lately, and also by books, but I seem to have got off track a bit and now I can't really remember what I was going to say. Let's leave it there.
Actually, this wasn't going to be a music post, but what the hell:
Snow Patrol - How To Be Dead
please don't go crazy if I tell you the truth / no, you don't know what happened / and you never will if you don't listen to me
The other underrated gem on that album is "Grazed Knees", which is about nothing more profound than a break-up, and it doesn't have a hook or chorus either, and also lingers with me into the dark.
And again, what the hell:
Snow Patrol - Grazed Knees
your breakfast will get cold / I really have to go
Everything else on it is fabulous, too; everyone in the world has heard "Run", so I won't upload that, and ditto "Spitting Games" (which I don't actually like all that much), and "Chocolate" is lovely, lovely, but the video version is actually better than the album version because it's longer. The video features a mass of frenzied people running around, waiting for a bomb to go off, trying to get the whole of the rest of their lives to fit in a very small space, and the music cuts out and fades as the bomb goes off.
Oh, it was inevitable really:
Snow Patrol - Chocolate
goodness knows I saw it coming / or at least I'll claim I did / but in truth I'm lost for words
The new album, which I am listening to for the first time at the moment, is more like mainstream pop/rock, but so far I love it. I'd heard "You're All I Have" already, of course, and also "Chasing Cars", which has the sort of emo video I would loathe if it were by any other band, but the rest is new to me and I can feel myself falling for it. This is made most evident by the fact that judging by the track lengths, it has to have been at least twenty-five minutes since I put this on, and I swear it was just a couple of minutes ago. I will upload tracks from it - if anyone wants it - once I've actually imported it.
And that would be good, as I am feeling very lacking in good music lately. I bought Keane's new album off Amazon at the same time as Eyes Open, and that's so far been a bit of a disappointment. I love "Is It Any Wonder?", which is the sort of caustic soaring song I kind of expected from them, but nothing else on the album has grabbed me. And that's a real shame, because Hopes And Fears, their first album, was probably my best purchase of 2004 (of anything, not just music!). I have no idea why I loved it so much, but during the summer months I probably listened to nothing else at all. Almost exactly two years ago, I was living on my own for two weeks, seeing no one, talking to no one, procrastinating madly while trying to study for my AS-levels and going half-crazy from the solitude. The days were too long, my parents were away and my friends all revising too, and the reason I remember it so vividly is because I was listening to "Bend and Break", a song off that album, on repeat, and writing "Love Is Not Love", and listening to that song and re-reading that story now bring the whole time back with extraordinary clarity.
My other link with Keane is, of course, the oft-reported fact that my former Biology teacher, a small, grey-haired gloriously eccentric ecologist called Rice-Oxley, is Tim Rice-Oxley's aunt. The song soon became an anthem for us all:
Keane - Bend and Break
I'll meet you on the other side / I'll meet you in the light
I miss that time. I thought that all I wanted was to leave school, and that was true pre-sixth-form - I'm so, so glad that I will never have to go back to that time, that high school is over - but sixth form was so much better and I don't know whether I did properly appreciate it. No, I think I did. It was a lovely time in my life, despite A-levels and university admissions and all the accompanying stress; I was with people doing the same things, I belonged with them, and we had two years together and it did feature such wonderful things as exploding custard powder and election campaigns and endless bags of sweets and running around with transpiring laburnams and politics and a lot of sugar. It was a good time.
Um. I was making this post to complain about how I keep getting disappointed by music lately, and also by books, but I seem to have got off track a bit and now I can't really remember what I was going to say. Let's leave it there.
