ADVISORY to all pseudo-alternative rock bands: before creating a record, know that no matter how hard you try, it will not be better than Third Eye Blind’s debut album. It will not be as good, and it will just sound like a cheap imitation.
So many of these so-called “alt-rock” bands today try to expand upon this formula with quite little success, and, with a few exceptions, Snow Patrol seems to have hopped on that bandwagon.
Prior to Eyes Open, I had only really heard the O.C. smash hit “Run,” but as cliché as the lyrics were in that song, I liked the mood it set and the interesting guitar intro. I guess when listening to this CD, I expected eleven songs just like that, but just titled with other verbs that he does (“Walk” “Jog” “Stand In Place” etc.), but instead I was hit with something different. The first track, “You’re All I Have,” starts out with a Sigur Rós-esque distant melody, something that got me very excited, but then immediately snaps out of it and reels into the typical two chord wonder. I noticed that this dual pattern is common in many of the CDs songs, not just based on the structure of the songs, but even the titles (Hands Open, Chasing Cars, Eyes Open…). As the CD progresses, the patterns only get more repetitive, the lyrics more trite, and my ears more in pain.
It’s not until the song “Shut Your Eyes” that there is any semblance of creativity from these young fellers. I judged this album a great deal from the guitar lines, and this one has an interesting usage of the chords, similar to that of “I Run,” where he has one note changing while the rest of the chord remains stagnant. It occurs in other songs and sometimes sounds clumped together and uneven, but it works well in this song.
Thankfully it goes right back to the formulaic watered down-ness of the first part of the album with the next song, “It’s Beginning to Get to Me,” and I couldn’t agree with the title more.
After that comes a nice little lullaby-styled ballad, “You Could Be Happy,” with a cutesy xylophone introduction. The band tries way too hard to have its lyrics rhyme, and it just takes away from any respect I could have for the poetry aspect of their songs (“You could be happy / I hope you are / You made me happier than I’ve been / by far”).
The next song, the last song I truly enjoy on the album, is called “Make This Go On Forever.” It should’ve been the last song, but it’s a good piano song, with another interesting chord structure (anything’s more interesting than the first song’s E major A major bonanza).
After that, the album seems to just die out and end on a very weak note with “The Finish Line,” with some electronic synthesizer in the background over his voice commanding over it. By the end of the album, you will probably be very annoyed with his voice. It’s not that it’s bad, but there’s no emotion into it, and it kind of just sounds like he’s singing from his throat the whole time.
I hope that if Snow Patrol is to make another album in the near future, they decide to go with their own original sound, not the sound of [insert many bands here]. “Shut Your Eyes” and “Make This Go On Forever” are little gasps of creativity, and I hope that the band will soon be able to take a big gulp and go against the mainstream blur for once. |