Songs For Polarbears

The late '90s found Scotland once again flying the indie-pop flag abandoned by the U.S. scene, and the one of the groups that followed in the footsteps of Belle & Sebastian, the Delgados, and Urusei Yatsura was a quartet of expat Irishmen called Snow Patrol. The group's debut full-length release, SONGS FOR POLARBEARS, is a fun collection of melodious three-chord indie-rock nuggets of noise, given context by Gary Lightbody's second-generation slack vocals and peppered with Tom Simpson's rhythm-inducing record-scratching. Tracks like the new wave-friendly "Starfighter Pilot," the loud and thorny breakup rant "Get Balsamic Vinegar...Quick You Fool," and the soft, lazily yearning "Velocity Girl" expertly take their cues and references from the Americans who had defined this sound in the preceding past decade (Pixies, Pavement, Sonic Youth). But Simpson's nimble DJ-ing skill--scratches that reinforce the music's forward motion, samples that reiterate song points--clearly illustrate that Snow Patrol is going with the evolutionary flow rather than living in an indie nirvana circa 1994. SONGS FOR POLARBEARS boasts sonic joys aplenty.|