Snow Patrol rocked Bangor
Thursday, September 27th, 2007Snow Patrol rocked Bangor
By Rodney Edwards
Snow Patrol played a blistering homecoming set at Ward Park in Bangor last week.
Front man Gary Lightbody looked grubby and destitute and not a chart-topping superstar, following his experiment with facial hair. Nevertheless, his face fuzz didn’t affect his singing voice, as he kicked off the performance with ‘Hands Open’ to a deafening torrent of sycophantic praise.
Lightbody and drummer Jonny Quinn both come from the seaside town so it was a fitting choice of venue to end their current world tour and Gary couldn’t contain his excitement; ““This is probably the best day of our lives, we used to play football in this park when we were kids, I never imagined we’d be playing here years later,” he said.
Many of the 30,000 people that turned up were inebriated by the time Snow Patrol played their second song ‘Chocolate’, although many of them had been soaking up the atmosphere (and booze) for quite a while as earlier in the day they were treated to such bands as Kowalski, Simple Kid, The Dead 60s, We Are Scientists and Ash. Still, it was fairly entertaining to see some of them throwing some abnormal shapes in the air as if they were at some sort of rave.
Next up for Snow Patrol was ‘lt’s Beginning To Get To Me’, ‘Chasing Cars’, ‘Spitting Games’ and ‘How To Be Dead’. Before the pending encore, they performed the brilliant ‘Run’ from ‘Final Straw’ - the album responsible for catapulting the group to mainstream success. Unfortunately, this top tune was savaged to death by an overemotional girl a few places in front of me waving a lighter and howling the words in a nauseating manner. C’mon love, pull yourself together.
Snow Patrol headlined Tennents Vital in Botanic Gardens last year and also sold out the Odyssey Arena in December but this was the first time they had staged a show of this size in their home town and they loved it. So much so, when the band came back onto the stage, Gary pledged to return, even if the neighbours disapproved; “If you’re listening in the houses around the park, you can complain tomorrow but we will be back again, hopefully we can do this every year or every two years.” he said.
And at that, Snow Patrol rounded off the evening with ‘You’re All I Have’, neatly topped off with a glittering display of colourful fireworks lighting up the cold dark sky. Don’t worry if you missed it, Snow Patrol will be home again soon.
