Are you a Snow Patrol fan? If you are, then we’ve got some good news for you on this gloomy afternoon.
You see, dear reader, it is our joyous responsibility to tell you that Snow Patrol are back with a brand-new, sixteen-track album. It’s not just any new album, though – it’s a Reworked album.
‘What the heck does that mean?’, we hear you mumble? Well, we’re glad you asked. That, in short, basically means that they’ve taken all of their best songs, stripped ’em back, and added a bunch of strings, keyboards, harmonies, and other assorted flourishes to them. Oh, and they’ve chucked in a couple of new songs for good measure.
It is, as one might expect, absolutely bloody brilliant.
We love the album; and, truth be told, we’re rather partial to a bit of Snow Patrol, too.
That’s why we couldn’t turn down the opportunity to corner Snow Patrol‘s Jonny Quinn to chat about their all-new ‘Reworked’ album, streaming, the brilliance of Ginger Baker, and why one of the biggest British bands of the twenty-first century decided to spend the last year orchestrating (and recording) an elaborate full-length record in a seemingly never-ending series of hotel rooms, backstage areas, and dingy rehearsal rooms.
Why was now the right time for you to go back and rerecord your back catalogue in this new, stripped-back way?
‘Well, ten years ago this month, we did a tour called ‘Reworked’. We had an eighteen-piece band, played smaller, seated theatres, and reimagine all of the songs. Since then, everybody’s been talking about whether we were going to do it again and whether we were going to record it.
‘So, seeing as this is our twenty-fifth year together, we figured that this was a good time to go ahead and do just that. We also had some new songs – I Think Of Home and Time Won’t Go Slowly – and we didn’t want to wait until our next album to put those out. So, it all just came together quite nicely.
What struck us with this album was how these new arrangements allowed the songwriting to shine through on some of the lesser-known tracks.
A lot of people think of you as a ‘songwriting band’ – the melodies are always strong, and the lyrics always have a certain poignancy. But the tracks that we really enjoyed on this release weren’t the likes of Chasing Cars, or Run, or any of your ‘iconic’ tracks; but, the likes of Crack The Shutters, and Take Back The City, and those songs that aren’t as embedded in the public consciousness to the same extent.
‘Yeah, for sure. Well, that’s kind of part of the reason why we did this album. When you rearrange a song, you often hear them in a totally different way – like when you hear a cover of a song you love and realise that you’ve been singing the wrong lyrics for years! You’ve never heard the lyrics or the melodies in a certain way, and then you go ‘Ah! That’s what the song means!’. So, I think that people may well have the same reactions to some of our lesser-known songs when they hear them in their Reworked formats.
When you were writing the new tracks for the album: did you write them as you’d write a usual Snow Patrol song and then strip them back, or did you approach them from a more minimalist perspective than you usually would?
‘They were written as they sound; so, they were stripped-back to begin with. For the recording of this album, we were on tour for the last year and a half, and Johnny McDaid had a little studio on the road with him, so we’d just record things on the go in dressing rooms or hotel rooms.
‘Those new songs were recorded in that way, so it was kinda limited to a certain extent – after all, when you’re recording in a tiny dressing room, you’ve only got a small palette of instruments you can work with, so it doesn’t really lend itself to massive guitars and distortion and the like.
‘We just weren’t sure whether this stripped-back, more electronic direction would be the one we’d go with for the next record, either, so our Reworked album just seemed like it would be a great home for these new tracks.
‘We’re stopping at the end of the year, and – aside from some festivals next summer – we’re going to be focusing on the new record from there on, so it’s great to just get a couple of new tracks out there along with this package.
‘I Think Of Home, for instance, is quite a standalone song that Gary’s written about Northern Ireland, and it wouldn’t quite sit on its own on a Snow Patrol record – so, this was a good home for it. By the time we get another record out – which won’t be that long, but in the scheme of recording and releasing it, it might be too long. In this day and age, where people don’t like waiting too long for music, it’s good just to get stuff out there as often as you can.
‘I think we should do that more often, actually. Whereas before we had songs that hadn’t had a place, now you can just put that out there on streaming services – that’s a great thing.
You guys have been together for twenty-five years, after all – the entire landscape of the music industry has changed a hell of a lot in that time.
‘Yeah. We kinda had a big break from 2011 – 2018, and when we started that Spotify was really only just beginning. Then, when we came back, it was just a totally different landscape. Between that and the dawn of social media, we basically had to re-learn what was going on.
‘I think it’s quite difficult for bands these days; when we started, it was tough, but it certainly wasn’t as tough as it is now. I’m hoping that the labels will start investing in real bands again and that there’s some sort of comeback on that. Streaming is okay – after all, there’s more income as they grow – so I’m hopeful for a better future in that respect, too.
Do you have a favourite track from the album?
‘I really like Time Won’t Go Slowly. I think that Called Out In The Dark is really good, as well – we’re big fans of Empire Of The Sun, and you can really see the influence of them on that one… We’ve slightly stolen their tricks there. Take Back The City, too, I think has worked well; it’s gone from being a song that’s quite full-on and turned into something that’s vastly different, but still rather lovely.
How much of a challenge has it been to transform these minimal reworkings into something that works in the live arena?
‘We have a few arrangements that are fairly similar to those we played on the last tour, but there are nine new ones that we’re about to start working out. We’ve got three or four days of rehearsals before the tour starts, so it’s not too much – after all, we’ve only got to learn about forty songs…
‘If it was Jazz, they’d have it done by lunchtime, but that’s real musicians for you. It should be grand, though. We’re playing with a lot of people who can read and write music – string players and brass players and the like – so they’ll be fine. It’s more us that might be a bit shady…
Are there any other tracks from your catalogue that you’d like to have revisited?
‘Yeah, actually. An Olive Grove Facing The Sea is a real favourite of mine: I don’t think that we got it right when we recorded it the first time, so it would’ve been good to do. We’ve actually always thought of re-recording that one, but we just never got around to doing it. Sometimes, there are songs that you just know you didn’t quite nail it; and then, you play it live, and something clicks that maybe wasn’t there before.
As a fan, which artists would you love to hear do a Reworked-style album?
‘A lot of the bands that I like have already reworked their songs! I’d like to hear Empire Of The Sun rework their songs. Teenage Fanclub, too, actually – or Primal Scream, perhaps. Those would all be… Interesting.
If you could be in any other band, which would it be and which instrument would you want to play?
‘Drums in Cream. For sure. Purely from a drummer’s point of view – but, to be in that band, you’d need to be better than Ginger Baker, which is just not possible.
Describe yourself in three words?
‘Laid-back, ambitious, and… Love music.