Snow Patrol

Snow Patrol might have been one of the best concerts I've ever been to in my life. However, it's almost unfair to rank it with all the others, because it wasn't a concert in the common sense: it was a special, unique event of sorts. We thought we were just going to see a regular, run-of-the-mill stop on the Snow Patrol tour that happened to be at the Royal Albert Hall. I think I started to think something was fishy when I found that highly unusual setlist I posted in the last entry. I then noticed that the tickets didn't say "Snow Patrol Live" or something typical of that nature, they said "An Evening with Snow Patrol." I knew something was definitely up when there wasn't a security check of any sort at the doors--no matter how momentarily they look into your bag, I've never been to a concert without a security check before. I began to notice the people in the hallways weren't the sort you'd necessarily imagine being at a Snow Patrol concert: most were around 30 and wearing things a few marks nicer than the faded jeans, white Hanes t-shirt, and hoodie I had on. We climbed to our seats in the choir, behind the stage, and noticed that there were places onstage for quite a few more than five musicians. There was going to be a significant portion of an orchestra.

There wasn't an opener, and the band (well, Gary) came out almost exactly at 8 wearing a suit and tie. He started with "the Finish Line," which I still find odd, but I love that song, so I can't complain. It turns out we were in for an amazingly stripped down, intimate concert that was certainly more of an event than a regular tour stop. Gary talked with the audience at length between quite literally every song. I never really knew that much about Snow Patrol the band in the way that I know a lot about Coldplay the band or the Beatles the band, but I quickly decided that Gary Lightbody was entering the "lead singers I have a massive crush on" list. I guess from the music, you'd think he'd be a kind of mopey, sad, shy sort of guy, but he was hilarious the entire night. He leapt off the stage at three points during the night to hug random audience members, and once to help a random guy propose to his girlfriend. I loved how small he made the place seem by just talking to us like he was: the Royal Albert Hall isn't a huge venue to begin with, but it felt like there were only about 100 people there as opposed to 5,000.

I also loved the originality and spontaneity. Of course, they had a setlist planned out, but Gary decided that for "An Olive Grove Facing the Sea" that they would do it completely without microphones or amplification. He turned off his microphone and unplugged his guitar and got the choir girls to stand around him, and because the Albert Hall has world-renowned acoustics, you could hear every single note just by being in the same room. Each song was slightly different than the album version: some songs I couldn't even recognize by the musical intro, and I didn't know what was coming until Gary started singing the words. I missed videoing some of the best songs this way. They also used the Albert Hall's actual organ for "Dark Roman Wine." I didn't think that thing actually worked anymore! I thought it was just for show and architecture! Luckily, I got that song on video, unlike many others that I wished I had. I wish they had recorded the performance on CD or DVD: I've never wanted to relive a concert this badly purely for musical reasons. If I had known this was going to be special and there wasn't going to be a security check, I would have brought an MP3 recorder. Also my SLR camera...even though I was behind the stage.

And now for a bit of a fangirl rant: this is the exact sort of thing Coldplay need to do. As much as I'm in love with them and die of happiness every time I see them in concert, they really need to shake themselves up a bit when it comes to their live performances. Every show has the same setlist and they don't divert from it, and it mostly consists of the most recent songs. Chris even cracks some of the same jokes from night to night. Snow Patrol pulled out songs from their first two commercially-unsuccessful albums, as well as several songs from Gary's side-project band the Reindeer Section. Coldplay need to get a nice venue (perhaps the Royal Albert Hall? It's my favorite venue in the world bar none after seeing two concerts there now), an orchestra, a guest musician or two, and play some old songs, play some recent songs in different ways (acoustically or with the orchestra), and just relax. They don't trust themselves to play anything or say anything that's not printed on the pre-planned setlist or play longer than 1.5 hours, and they can totally pull it off. They need to have a unique event like this. It also wouldn't hurt if they wore suits.

Here are my pictures from the show. They're not very good, but the videos, that I'm slowly posting on my YouTube channel, are quite good in terms of sound quality. Here are official pictures from the evening, and here's the three-hour long setlist. The only thing I would have changed was that I wish they played "Open Your Eyes" and "the Lightning Strike" with the orchestra.