Snow Patrol Change It Up

When it came time to write and record their fifth album, A Hundred Million Suns, Snow Patrol wanted to do a few things differently. The end of the tour cycle for 2006's Eyes Open, which turned them into rock stars, made them wonder what to do next.

The result was an album which drummer Jonny Quinn says is very different from previous releases. The band consciously and unconsciously changed the songwriting process, which resulted in an album that's much happier than their last few releases.

CHARTattack spoke to Quinn about how those changes came to fruition and Snow Patrol's slight change in direction.

CHARTattack: Can you tell me a bit about the writing and recording process for A Hundred Million Suns?
Jonny Quinn: It was very difficult and very stressful. We don't quite know what we're creating until we're in the studio, and then it becomes what it is. We decided not to go the route of "Chasing Cars" and "Run," and we wanted to take the strings out of it and put in brass and other instruments instead.

You guys are known over here for your ballads. I don't know about over there. Why did you want to steer away from them this time around?
Well, we just didn't want to do the same thing again. We realize we're known for "Chasing Cars" and "Run." It's interesting for us to explore new ways to get people to be interested in Snow Patrol.

I know you worked with Jacknife Lee again. What's so great about him? You've worked with him since Final Straw, right?
I think he does the job better than anybody. The first album that he ever produced was Final Straw, and then he went on to produce R.E.M., U2, Bloc Party, Editors... We just sort of grew up with him, and every time we do an album he'd come back with ideas, and we just felt comfortable working with him again. He kind of works every time, and we don't want to change it, but maybe next time we will.

In trying to make the record a little bit different than the last one, do you think you were successful in the end?
I think we just tried different ways of playing and we had some drum lessons and some guitar lessons and we had sort of tried to use different instruments than we had before and experiment a bit more. Normally, we'd done just traditional guitar, bass, drums, keyboards kind of things. We tried to mix it up a bit and bring different influences in.

It's not really late in the game for you guys to be successful, but is it strange having success now as opposed to when you first started?
Oh, yeah. It's really strange because when we started, no one cared. We were waiting for the phone to ring. A lot of our ideas haven't changed, but we just got a bit more organized. We're still the same band. Even if this album doesn't do what Eyes Open does, like if it doesn't sell a few million, we don't care. What we want to do is make something we're really proud of and, if it happens, it happens. We just need to be hard on ourselves and progress.