“This is not a love song,” remarks Gary Lightbody, Snow Patrol’s frontman, in the opening line of the first track, “All,” on the band’s eighth studio album, The Forest is the Path. “I’m just checking that your light’s still on / I just want to feel like I belong / But I don’t know where I am,” he continues. Sentiments like this, feeling lost in love and searching within oneself for a sense of belonging, are prevalent on the album, the first one since 2018’s Wildness. Snow Patrol have long toed the line between classic and alternative rock, with their catchiest songs gracing movie soundtracks and ruling radio airwaves. Lightbody is the only remaining original band member, and despite a serious battle with depression and alcoholism that nearly cost him his life (and necessitated long hiatuses between album releases) and the recent departure of the band’s drummer and bassist, he has kept the Snow Patrol sound and motifs intact. On The Forest is the Path, the band’s trademark balance between soaring rock anthems and mellow ballads is on full display, with a reflective depth that rewards listeners over the course of multiple listens. Similarly, in the middle of “All,” Lightbody comes to the appropriate realization after measuring up his feelings, “So I guess this is a love song after all.”
On “Everything’s Here and Nothing’s Lost,” amidst a steady beat and beautiful keyboard flourishes, Lightbody sings, “Finish me / I’m tired of being incomplete / It joined the dots of me so I can feel my feet / And don’t pretend that we are not all broken pieces.” Like many of the songs, there’s a level of praise and gratitude toward the subject Lightbody sings to, the “you.” He sings, “I’m with you anytime / Every time you choose,” with increasing emotion as the song crescendos to a finish.
Many of the album’s twelve tracks revolve around the twirling nature of past and future romance, as Lightbody constantly looks back with mournful honesty and forward with uplifting vulnerability. “These Lies” is a stripped-down balladic version of these mindsets. Meanwhile, “Never Really Tire” is a statement piece – a nearly six-minute foot-stomping commentary on facing the imminent fears and anxiety of being in a relationship. Lightbody softly begins the song with “Fuck your horizon / Feeding time again / Terrified to leave him / Staring at the sun.” The lyrics are visual and vibrant, capturing the dark, heightened emotions of breaking out of one’s shell and giving in to lustful, primitive impulses. “What you waited for / You never really tire of it / You never really tire of it.”
Meanwhile, “Talking About Hope” and “Hold Me in the Fire” take the listener through stories that focus on the present – the former song more intimate, the latter song more bombastic. “Hold Me in the Fire’s” anthemic crescendo finishes with Lightbody exclaiming, “I can’t tell where you end and I begin.” It’s one of his many standout vocal performances on the album and will hit an exuberant nerve in listeners looking for a new rock song for solo sing-alongs in the car.
The title track (also the closing track), “The Forest is the Path,” has all the characteristics you’d expect from an album’s final number: swelling orchestration, a catchy chorus, and closing thoughts wrapped up within beautiful metaphors. In this case, a metaphor-filled chorus: “Well it should have felt like heartbreak / Well I should have finished every thought I had / Every song sounds like an earthquake / Every word cuts through this endless forest like a path.” Lightbody had started the song off with the sentiment “I’m not afraid to wander endlessly / I just don’t know how to be found.” By the end of the song, however, he has come to terms with his heartache, singing, “So this is what it is to love someone / You wear your heart upon their sleeve.” This song also contains the first and only time the entire band sings in unison with additional backup singers. So when the full-throated chorus hits near the end of the song, this creates the effect of the band inviting listeners to join them, to move together as a group… along the path through the forest.
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Snow Patrol’s The Forest is the Path will be released on Friday, September 13th.
