Reviews: Snow Patrol, Final Fantasy

Reviews: Snow Patrol, Final Fantasy

Snow Patrol "Eyes Open": Aidin Vaziri | Right about now, Chris Martin should be watching his back. After years of sounding like a middling university band (largely because it was), Belfast's Snow Patrol sprang to life on 2004's "Final Straw," thanks to the towering pop singles "Run" and "Chocolate." Two years later, the ridiculously named band returns with an album that slays from the very first notes of its rumbling opener, "You're All I Have." Singer Gary Lightbody may stomp through the familiar wasteland of relationships, but he has a way of turning things upside down with stinging lines like, "Somehow everything I own smells of you." And in "Chasing Cars," the band has come up with its crowning moment, a U2-worthy stunner complete with chiming guitars and epic chorus that will melt the competition.

Final Fantasy "He Poos Clouds": Aidin Vaziri | Owen Pallett dresses up in sailor suits, obsesses over video games and was once described in a New York Times headline as, "The World's Most Popular Gay Postmodern Harpsichord Nerd." Trained as an opera composer, the Toronto-based musician first grabbed the public's imagination through his work as a string arranger on "Funeral," the Arcade Fire's breakthrough disc. "He Poos Clouds" is the tastefully titled second album by his violin-driven solo project, Final Fantasy. It's certainly not easy listening. Songs like "This Lamb Sells Condos" and "Arctic Circle" sound like carnival music gone wrong, with creeping strings, seesawing piano flourishes and Pallett's histrionic voice serving to make them the most frightening thing that has happened to popular music since the last Shakira video.