Catch Snow Patrol on their current mid-sized venue tour while you can, because with You're All I Have (the first single from Eyes Open, the follow-up to their successful breakthrough album Final Straw), it's pretty clear they've set their sights on a future filled with transatlantic stadiums. In come US-friendly rawk guitars, out goes the more tender (and interesting) lighters-aloft-in-training balladry they peddled on Chocolate and Run.
It's not that there's anything intrinsically wrong with this - after all, they've always skirted a very thin line between acceptable AOR and Keane/Embrace tedium, but they could do much better. Gary Lightbody has previously managed to convey enough emotion to float above average guitar band mediocrity, and now that he and his friends are clearly on track to achieve their dreams of never playing to a crowd of less that 50,000 again, it's a shame that he doesn't give the impression that he's celebrating particularly hard.
You're All I Have isn't an entirely disappointing single, but at the same time there's nothing particularly that makes you want to sing its praises or, perhaps more unfortunately, to make you want to sing along. It'll no doubt do perfectly well with the endless hoards of 50-quid man who's already bought this year's ration of Coldplay though, and right now this probably suits them just fine.
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