Reigniting their tender, earnest brand of early-2000s indie rock,
Snow Patrol
returned after a six-year gap with their eighth album,
The Forest Is the Path
. Produced by
Fraser T. Smith
(
Adele
,
Stormzy
), the set retains all of the Scottish band's typical hallmarks: faint piano twinkles, atmospheric guitars, patient, midtempo beats, and
Gary Lightbody
's wounded vocals and vulnerable lyrics about love and time. The soaring opener, "All," sets the tone as
Lightbody
warns, "And they say that pride, it comes before the fall/But so does silence, dear." The energy switches for the relatively explosive "The Beginning" and continues to build as the album progresses, swelling with the grandeur of "This Is the Sound of Your Voice" and the urgent, guitar-driven "Hold Me in the Fire." Recalling early-era gems like "Spitting Games," catchy standouts such as the poppy earworm "Everything's Here and Nothing's Lost" and the intense, uptempo blast "Years That Fall" could even score the group additional mainstream hits (if given the chance). The drama escalates toward the close with "Never Really Tire" and the heartbreaking "These Lies," pushing the already heightened emotions further to the brink. For a band whose output has slowed to just three albums in nearly two decades, this set proves that taking one's time and re-emerging when there's something to say really pays off. Big feelings and even bigger yearning continue to be the orders of the day -- no surprise for longtime listeners and mutual fans of
Travis
Keane
, and early
Coldplay
-- making
yet another late-era treasure trove that highlights all the facets of
's pure emotional catharsis and introspection. ~ Neil Z. Yeung