It may not come as news to the committed, but many casual fans of Snow Patrol will be unaware that Eyes Open is the band’s fourth album. After nearly a decade, and two underperforming releases (Music for Polarbears and When it’s All Over We Still Have to Clear Up), Final Straw (2004) gave the Glaswegians a belated breakthrough.

And yet, in many ways, Eyes Open is a second album. It comes loaded with expectation because its predecessor’s two million sales have catapulted the band into a different league. Both literally and figuratively, they are no longer the same little indie outfit fixated with US alt.rock that came together at Dundee University and signed to Jeepster. The bassist and co-founder, Mark McClelland, has departed, replaced by Paul Wilson, and the band has expanded to a quintet. The frontman Gary Lightbody has seized control of the songwriting and steered it still further towards indie rock’s equivalent of the power ballad. If you think Run and Chocolate were big then You’re All I Have and Hands Open are bigger — the sort of songs destined to have glowing mobile phones held aloft in vast stadiums.
Again produced by Garrett “Jacknife” Lee, Eyes Open takes Final Straw and projects it on to a larger canvas. You’re All I Have kickstarts it in typically anthemic style with plangent guitars taking the “A” road to a huge chorus. Hands Open is built on an insistent driving beat, with rippling guitar from Nathan Connolly, and Beginning to Get to Me opens like an enormous bubble of sound surfacing from the depths.

If there’s a caveat, it’s Lightbody’s ability to keep recycling his emotional inadequacy. You Could Be Happy conveys it via tinkling glockenspiels, Make This Go on Forever has him clinging to a splintered mast as a huge chorus builds like an Atlantic squall. Just when you crave some variety it arrives in the shape of a gorgeous duet with Martha Wainwright, Set the Fire to the Third Bar, in which both attempt to thaw an emotional frostiness underpinned by shivering strings and piano. It’s one of the main reasons Eyes Open feels like a nerveless triumph.

To watch and hear Snow Patrol interviewed go to www.timesonline.co.uk/podcasts.

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