Eyes Open for Snow Patrol

Hunchermuncher lent me the new Snow Patrol album "Eyes Open".
Now I have quite liked some of Snow Patrols previous stuff, especially tracks like "Run", "How to be Dead", "Ask me How I Am" and "Half the Fun of it" which have spent quite some time on my ipod. But smehow I had got into my head that I was not going to like the new album. i don't know why, maybe it was all the hype, the constant media exposure who knows, but I had decided that I just wasn't buying into it.

Silly really as I reacted the opposite way with Coldplay but that was probably because the media were giving them a hard time and their music is very good. Whereas the media seem to love Snow Patrol and I don't like being dictated to. Anyway to get to the point I have been more than pleasantly surprised and am on my second listen as I write. I have found some of Snow Patrol's material to be quite weak previously but this album is probably their strongest music yet. Less wishy washy non descript tracks.

Highlights are:
You're All I Have
It's beginning to Get to Me
Set the Fire to the Third Bar (featuring Martha Wainwright, reminds me a little of the Magic Numbers)