ALBUM REVIEW: The Forest Is The Path – Snow Patrol
If there’s one thing SNOW PATROL’s eighth album teaches you, it’s that frontman Gary Lightbody could really do with a hug. The Forest Is The Path spends half its time crawling through sprawling suburbs stained by rain clouds that won’t leave, as Lightbody longs for either ex-lovers or ex-lives, begging to be held by someone in every other song.
All could take the crown for 2024’s most forgettable opener. Its subtle synths, sparse percussion and humming guitar are straight from the SNOW PATROL playbook, as if they’re parodying themselves. Only, they’ve made like the McAllisters and left the chorus, like Kevin, home alone. Its successor, The Beginning, trips over rhyming couplets and a chorus so weak, it’d be diagnosed with an iron deficiency.
Elsewhere, Your Heart Home sounds like SNOW PATROL’s lifted the soundtrack of an iPhone’s photo library montage, leaning into the rustic pop-rock of late-career TAKE THAT, whilst These Lies buries its bitterly beautiful lyrics — “Your kiss it never brought me to my knees / I didn’t ache for you til my heart would seize” — beneath the bluntest ballad you’ll hear this side of JAMES BLUNT’s You’re Beautiful.
If it sounds like you’ve heard the above before, it’s because you likely have. The Forest Is The Path sees the now-trio of Lightbody, guitarist Nathan Connolly and pianist Johnny McDaid spend most of their time sounding divinely uninspired to a hellish extent, attempting to rekindle the spark that lit chart-topping hits for them two decades ago.
It’s ironic, because former members Johnny Quinn and Paul Wilson left last year, after feeling like their hearts were no longer in the project. As far as this album is concerned, it sounds like none of their hearts are in it. What If Nothing Breaks? is a paint-by-numbers ballad masquerading as a lifeless body void of breath; Talking About Hope is a tepid cup of tea you wouldn’t wish your worst enemy to drink; and the title track is a not-so-subtle attempt at sounding like TAKE THAT covering BECK.
The Forest Is The Path’s halfway point offers a red herring of sorts. The three-track run of Hold Me In The Fire, Years That Fall and Never Really Tire briefly shines a light on SNOW PATROL’s ability to surprise and delight still. Hold Me In The Fire recalls the vibrant indie-rock roar of 2008’s Take Back The City; Years That Fall’s glimmering guitars, glittery synths, and grumbling basslines give way to a one-off chorus that kicks ass; and the towering six-minute Never Really Tire breaks the songwriting codes and conventions, skipping over a chorus, and festering in the bitterness of broken hearts and homes that ultimately teases out a taste of HOZIER.
However, a quarter of an album is not enough to save anyone’s soul and give back the time they’ve wasted wandering the solemn streets of modern-day SNOW PATROL.
Rating: 3/10
The Forest Is The Path is set for release on September 13th via Republic Records.
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Snooze Patrol
This odd review deserves 2 of 10 stars. Cliché driven metaphors and uninspired comparisions to other artists that fit so well as if an elephant tries dancing the Swan Sea Ballet. Bad embarassing research-skills as the former bassist’s name isn’t Mark Wilson and never was. A review that seems as if it was written by an artificial intelligence text-generator on its bad-hair-bytes day after the command ‘Write a miserable album review about XY and use some comparisions to other known artists’. The positive aspect of all is that tastes and preferences are as different like grains of sand. I for one (and many others) love the new tracks and they are galaxies away from sounding like older songs the band wrote in the past. The old and boring reproach to bands/artists who made once a world-hit trying always to repeat the success is so worn out that just reading such a line (again and again) shreds the inner sense of verbal aesthetics instantly.
“comparisions”
Obviously ironic. Reviewing reviews should be a new type of sport.