Snow Patrol @ Blank Canvas
By John HarveyWhen Morrissey sang the immortal Smiths lyrics: "I should have been wild and I should have been free/but nature played this trick on me" he had in mind the kind of people that are in the groups I'm watching tonight.
It's an interesting thing to consider really... how do some bands get signed while others don't? Why do some shift stacks of albums while others flounder? The last I heard of Snow Patrol they were some Glaswegian Belle & Sebastian boffing understudy. The last couple of months have seen them spiral unimaginable heights with a top three chart hit and some tour of America where Tom Cruise was spotted watching them or something.
I'm invited to this gig tonight by somebody that never usually goes to gigs, hence I know that something sinister is happening with this band. The young indie contingent are out in force tonight, as are the water cooler crew (hipster professionals), so are those strange men in their late twenties/early thirties with the Noel Gallagher haircuts that are often found lurking around these kinds of places and most harrowingly there are even a few of the folks that haunt Wetherspoon's pubs five nights a week in their best shell suit and sovereign rings.
Astrid are a band that have popped up here and there in recent years in the indie nether-nether lands. They start off quite quirky with what sounds like a freshly wrapped variety of pop powered guitar, but gradually they become more and more of a menial audible drudge and by the end of the set are more like hard work to listen to. The singer also keeps telling us to buy their album and t-shirts from the stalls in the corner, like some pushy sales person trying to flog a dead horse... a career in double glazing sir? Get your ass down Joseph's Well and the chances are you'll come across a band better than these guys.
Bring on Snow Patrol. Is it just one of those indie-schmindie clever names or is there really a patrol for snow somewhere? Anyway I can't really understand the appeal or see where the next hit is coming from. They sound like Coldplay being slowly humped by Placebo with the token slowie that sounds like bottom of the sub-Elbow barrel.
There really nice guys and everything and even tell us if we have £15 to buy an Astrid album or t-shirt instead of a Snow Patrol one. But there's nothing new and different on parade tonight, it's from a very safely trodden trad path, the difference is there are many more bands out there that are better at it.
