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For a band that is so often compared to nearly every popular band to have come out of the UK in the past few years, Snow Patrol are surprisingly easygoing and carefree. Their new album, Eyes Open, was “an absolute joy to make” according to guitarist Nathan Connolly. This infectious enthusiasm has certainly connected with audiences around the world, spawning two hit singles, “You’re All I Have and “Hands Open,” as well as a sold-out tour.

Eyes Open, the band’s fourth album, is a rare treat: an album made by musicians who are also clearly huge music fans themselves. On songs such as “Hands Open,” which features a shout-out to Brooklyn indie king Sufjan Stevens, and the haunting “Set The Fire To The Third Bar, ” a duet between lead singer Gary Lightbody and singer-songwriter Martha Wainwright, listeners glimpse layer upon layer of the band’s obvious growth and songwriting expertise. JIVE recently caught up with Snow Patrol guitarist Connolly as he prepared for their upcoming tour to talk symbolism, guitar prowess and the often-unavoidable task of not becoming a completely arrogant arsehole.

JIVE MAGAZINE (JM): How did you first start playing music?

Nathan Connolly (NC): I started in a gospel church choir when I was 16 years old. I suppose I was always around music, and like any other kid, teenage kid, 12 or 13, I wanted to be a rock star and play guitar. I kind of f*cked around with it for a few years and didn’t really learn much and wasn’t very good for the first two years, but then I started a band with my cousin and two mates from school and it kind of just went on from there. I started taking it a bit more seriously. I mean, I’ve always wanted to play in a band and write music, I just didn’t realize exactly how much when I first started.

JM: Where did the title for the album, Eyes Open, come from?

NC: Well, there’s a lot of mentions of eyes…

JM: That was actually my next question. There seems to be a running theme of awakenings on this album—many lyrics make reference to both opening and shutting your eyes; you even have two songs titled as such.

NC: Obviously Gary [Lightbody, lead singer] writes all of the lyrics but I don’t think it was a conscious thing at the time. I think it was more that when Gary finished the lyrics we all sort of looked at him and said, ‘God, there’s a lot of eyes in here.’ It’s kind of a hard thing to talk about, I mean, obviously the title came from the fact that a lot of the songs have ‘eyes’ in them…but it’s really just such a very honest record and in some cases you can see that in [someone’s] eyes…At the end of day it’s just a title as well, you know? I mean, what the hell was Final Straw?

JM: You say that Gary writes all of the lyrics but what is the songwriting process like for the band? Does Gary come to you guys with lyrics and then you formulate music around them?

NC: No, the music comes first. Basically myself, Gary and Paul will come in with an idea and the rest of us work on adding our particular parts to it. Up until this album it was usually Gary who would always come in with the main idea and we’d adapt ourselves to it but this time all five of us were writing and that definitely made for a much more collaborative record, which shows, I think.

JM: After the success of Final Straw, what was the mindset when all of you came in to record this album?

NC: The success thing…we all kind of live in our own little bubble in many ways. We listen to music until we can’t listen to music anymore, we’re buying music everyday and we love and get inspired by other bands and their music. But when it comes to recording we all kind of have our own little bubble. After the Final Straw, there wasn’t much time for reflecting, we just kind of went straight back to work. We’re pretty good that way—we have our own balances and checks.

With this record, it was very important that we get ourselves away, that’s why we went to the middle of Ireland. The line up had changed and we needed to get away together, just the five of us, writing and kind of getting comfortable with one another again. We were touring in support of Final Straw for two and a half years almost and we’re not the type of band that can write on the road.

JM: The band itself has been around for over 10 years. You’ve been in the band for the past two albums but success didn’t come for the band until the third record, Final Straw. Sting once said, while he was with The Police, that because he had been a musician for so long and success hadn’t come immediately, he was better equipped to handle it. Do you feel that this was the case for Snow Patrol as well?

NC: Definitely, although it was slightly different for me. I was in the band for about a year before we started recording that album so I kind of got into the mindset of what this band was about. So when that happened, it was two years before Final Straw came out and technically that was my first record. I’ve played in bands before, as I said, but if I hadn’t been in the company of people who had done that, who were going through that, who knows what my attitude might have been…I don’t know, I could have been an arsehole, you know what I mean? I don’t think I would have been but you don’t know that.

JM: How did you come to work with Martha Wainwright on “Set The Fire To The Third Bar?”

NC: We’re huge fans—that woman’s voice is just incredible and evokes so much emotion. We didn’t really know if she knew who we were or even if she liked us. It was Gary’s idea to get her to sing cause we were listening to her album quite a lot while we were writing [Eyes Open]. So Gary and Jacknife Lee, our producer, suggested that we get her to sing our song. Gary wrote that song specifically for her to sing rather than having her sing on something that was already half finished. It came about in the last week of recording and she did her vocal take on the very last day so it was kind of done very quickly. The mood of the song is very different for us.

We’d been in the studio for about nine weeks by that point so the creative juices were going and I think we all thought, ‘Wow, where’d that come from?’ So I think that while we’re proud of the whole record that song is certainly magical and just stunningly beautiful.

JM: Your first single off of Eyes Open in the UK was “You’re All I have.” Here in the US it was “Hands Open.” How do you decide what single to go with in each market?

NC: It sounds a bit cheesy but they generally pick themselves. Here the record company released “Hands Open” rather than “You’re All I Have” simply because they thought it would work better. But it’s pretty obvious—“You’re All I Have” is one of the first songs that we wrote for Eyes Open, it’s the first song on the album and it kind of bridges the gap between Final Straw and this album. “You’re All I Have” is very much like Final Straw but within the context of the new record. “Chasing Cars” will be the next single—so they really pick themselves. Some songs just wouldn’t work as a single, although in saying that, I do think that there are quite a lot of songs on this album that work as singles.

JM: A lot of your fans talk specifically about the energy that comes from the band in live performances. Why do you think that Snow Patrol has this reputation?

NC: I think the reason that we connect with the audience is because we’re not up there pulling poses and we’re not up there swaggering—we’re up there enjoying ourselves. Playing live is the reason why you want to be in a band. You know, we smile when we’re onstage, if the mood takes us that way. We enjoy ourselves because we’re all in this together. It’s never got tedious for us, every night is a new experience and so we just go with it.

JM: Why do you think that it is so hard for many British bands to make it in the US market? These past couple of years seem to have really opened up…

NC: I think it’s touring, really. These days a lot more British bands are getting the chance to do that. We didn’t have a hit song on the radio or anything like that, we built up our fan base by touring. The first time that we came to America, one of the first shows that we played was in Boston and there were only 50 people in a club. This is our second tour of the States in about two years and we’ve built up our fan base by constantly touring—not just east coast/west coast but into the middle, in places like Tulsa, [Oklahoma]. British bands are getting the opportunity a lot more now—Franz Ferdinand, Keane, all those bands are starting to do that. U2 were one of the first bands to break America but again, they toured a lot.

JM: What has been the greatest thing about making a living as a musician thus far?

NC: I suppose the greatest thing for me personally is that on this record I finally seem to know what the f*ck I’m doing for a change—I know what I’m doing with my instrument and I’ve become a better guitar player. I think with Final Straw, since I had joined the band not very long before we made that record I was a lot more timid, a lot more shy, and wasn’t really willing to throw myself into it. I suppose confidence is the key word, for myself and the rest of the band.

We now have the confidence to go with things and be brave enough to try them. I’m so proud of some of the guitar [parts] that I’ve done on this record and I’m proud of the guitar player that I’ve become. As a band, we’ve had some amazing things happen—supporting U2, getting to play things like Live 8, getting to the stage where we’re selling out larger sized venues, it’s great. All of those things though, as I said earlier, are great as long as you don’t let them go to your head and start believing your own sh*t. Because once you do that you’re f*cked. It’s very important to us that we don’t think that way…and I don’t think that we ever will.

Related Links:

www.snowpatrol.com
www.myspace.com/snowpatrol