The Empire Strikes Back
When Gary Lightbody came down with writer’s block he wondered if he had another album in him. Then Michael Stipe popped around for a pep talk and he never looked back. The result? A return-to-form record from Snow Patrol that channels LCD Soundsystem and Arcade Fire whilst always sounding like the work of a bunch of lovable indie underdogs who somehow conquered the world.
Olaf Tyaransen, 04 Jan 2012
It’s a chilly September afternoon in central London and Gary Lightbody is unwell. So unwell, apparently, that his scheduled interview with Hot Press has to be cancelled. Hmmm...
The last time the Snow Patrol frontman was spotted by your correspondent was at the aftershow party following his band’s blistering gig in the Shepherd’s Bush Empire two nights earlier. I put it down to a serious hangover, and fly home disappointed.
More than two months later, we finally catch up backstage in Dublin’s Button Factory, shortly before he’s due to play a short acoustic set to promote Meteor’s sponsorship of the Choice Music Prize.
“Sorry about missing you the last time, Olaf,” the 35 year-old singer apologises, pulling up a seat.
I can’t resist a cheeky reply: “No worries, Mr. Lightbody... it must have been quite some hangover.”
He looks genuinely shocked.
“I was not hungover,” he insists. “I was fucking throwing up like a wild bastard! It was not a pretty sight. Whoever said I was hungover needs a punch in the balls!”
He laughs and punches my arm. “Anyway... alright you?!”
Casually dressed in a sweater and jeans, Gary isn’t a man overly concerned with portraying any kind of rock star image. Then again, when you’re consistently coming up with the musical goods, it doesn’t really matter what you look like. Not that the musical goods came particularly easily this time around. We’re meeting – finally – to discuss Snow Patrol’s sixth studio long-player, Fallen Empires. Produced once again by Dubliner Garret ‘Jacknife’
Lee, the album was recorded from start to finish entirely on Californian sand.
“We’ve always been obsessed with American music, American culture,” he explains. “It’s the place that, for the first ten years of our career, we really wanted to get to and we couldn’t get there. Making a record there felt like sticking a Snow Patrol flag in the land that kind of inspired us.”
That flag was first stuck in the desert. In October 2010, the band headed to The Joshua Tree National Park for initial writing sessions at Rancho De La Luna Studios. Although these yielded some fruit in the shape of four near-finished songs, Lightbody then fell victim to an excruciating bout of writer’s block, which lasted almost three months and left him reconsidering his future as a rock star. Eventually the tender ministrations of Dr. Michael Stipe got him back on track.
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