Finding Faith In A Sunnier Place

The Age

Friday October 24, 2008

Craig Mathieson

A love of life and science helps Snow Patrol to change tack, writes Craig Mathieson.

WHEN Gary Lightbody, the frontman of Snow Patrol, gets worked up, which is quite often, he stutters. Words - particularly a nervous "I-I-I" - get caught up in his rush of thoughts and snag in his mouth before suddenly blurting out. It's the complete opposite of how he communicates through music. With his band, Lightbody is assured, determined and absolutely certain of what he wants to say. Songs are his native tongue.

"If I could, I would only work on Snow Patrol records or tour with these guys," says the lanky 32-year-old, who is pacing around his house outside Belfast in Northern Ireland as he promotes Snow Patrol's new album, A Hundred Million Suns. "I want to channel my being mental into something productive."

Little more than a year ago, Snow Patrol played the third-last show of a year-long world tour to an excited crowd at the Rod Laver Arena. It was a coronation of sorts. Eyes Open, their fourth album, had spent five weeks atop the Australian charts and sold more than 300,000 copies thanks to their ubiquitous breakthrough single Chasing Cars.

The only person not satisfied was Lightbody. He finished the tour with more than 200 songs written, which he began editing immediately, while he hired the powerful QPrime management company to further the band's already burgeoning career. But what he wanted most of all was to make a positive record.

"I felt like I had neglected the really great bits of my life and been so hard on myself the last few years. I couldn't take it any more," explains Lightbody. "I was to blame for all of those things that happened, but singing those songs every night was intense and it actually took an awful lot out of me."

Both Eyes Open and 2003's Final Straw obsessively detailed a relationship that had foundered on Lightbody's infidelities. These were intimate, painful songs rendered with such unerring directness that they emerged as anthems.

"One of the many problems with me - and this is also a good thing - is that I write from my heart. There's no on and off switch. It just comes out," says Lightbody.

Snow Patrol's music, along with Lightbody's ambitions for the band, has become his way of changing himself for the better. A serious problem with alcohol, which marked his early years in Scotland, where he moved for university study in 1994 and never left, and the first incarnation of Snow Patrol, was eventually dealt with. The memories still linger, however, with the vocalist unfailingly self-honest about his many failings.

"I've never done anything maliciously, I'm not a bad person," he concedes, "but you can't blame everything on booze or accidents."

On A Hundred Million Suns a corner has been turned. Begun in rural Ireland and finished in Berlin, the album is expansive and mainly optimistic. Tracks such as Crack the Shutters - a future single that will rival Chasing Cars - reflect the glow of unfettered love. The songs still draw a commitment from Lightbody that is less about entertainment than faith. Snow Patrol's ability to strike a universal note stems from the songwriter's desire to have something to believe in.

"As much as I hate organised religion, I can't help but fall back on the moral code," he explains. "My grandmother was extraordinarily religious and it had a profound effect on me. I saw religion in two different ways in Northern Ireland: I saw how it was destructive, tearing communities apart, but on an individual basis my grandmother was completely fulfilled by religion, she was filled up with God. She passed away reading the Bible, it was lying on her chest when she died."

There are never more than two people in a Snow Patrol song, but on the new record they're framed by a sense of space that marks Lightbody's protagonists as tiny figures in a vast universe. On a song of devotion such as The Golden Floor, the lovers exist

amid intimations of the scientific world.

"Science has become a big part of my life in recent years. This record is informed by metaphors of the universe and time. There's a beauty in the atomic level of love. Love can be whimsical and

wistful, but there's also a beauty in the idea that your atoms can be joined with someone else. When you kiss someone you leave a few atoms of yours on their lips and they leave a few atoms of theirs on your lips."

For once Lightbody's so satisfied that the stutter and nervous tics disappear. He's found his own Bible.

A Hundred Million Suns is out tomorrow through Universal.

© 2008 The Age

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