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Final Straw, third album from Glasgow-based quintet Snow Patrol, is a darker, nastier and altogether bleaker beast than anything they've produced before. These are ostentatiously pop melodies that have been locked up in a basement, blindfolded over night and subjected to gleefully twisted torture and cruelty until they've squealed. The bruised, distorted (yet basically acoustic) "Wow" highlights this methodology best, producing an ugly princess of a song that sounds like U2 from the Achtung Baby era. There's even handclapping over a dangerously fuzzed-up guitar riff on "Tiny Little Fractures". Lead single "Spitting Games" is what the Thrills will sound like in 10 years time if a decade's worth of rock & roll excess takes its toll--it possesses the kind of catchy, fuzzed-up, demented bumblebee guitar hook that most bands spend their careers searching for.
Track listing:
1. How To Be Dead
2. Wow
3. Gleaming Auction
4. Whatever's Left
5. Spitting Games
6. Chocolate
7. Run
8. Grazed Knees
9. Ways And Means
10. Tiny Little Fractures
11. Somewhere A Clock Is Ticking
12. Same
13. We Can Run Away Now They're All Dead And Gone
14. Half The Fun
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