Fallen Empires

Wow. If you have a choice get this CD+DVD combination! ... and for £2---£3 more than the vanilla CD it's a bargain. In fact on it's own it would be worth the purchase... if it was available on it's own!
Unlike most combinations the DVD is unrelated to the present album. Instead it is about 65minute highlight (the best songs) from the ReWorked tour. It was filmed at arguably the best acoustically and visually concert venue in London - the Royal Albert Hall in late 2009. For those who weren't there / haven't heard or seen it it features songs from the previous 6 albums reworked acoustically and featuring classic instruments - including (and the reason for the RAH venue recording) the enormous (and I mean enormous) organ (about 5x10metres at the back of the RAH)... the audio of which is used on Dark Roman Wine and the sound (I was there) shakes you to your core! Impressive stuff! A few songs (Run) don't work in that maybe you miss the version you know and love - but 7 out of the 11 or so tracks are amazing with Chasing Cars getting an amazing reworking that'll leave you singing along (in your head at least) and toe-tapping away!
Audio is uncompressed stereo or a nice 5.1 mix!
Possibly the only unfortunate thing is that this was never released on it's own as I'm sure the whole gig would have been filmed! The full set runs nearly 2h30mins and contains 26 tracks!).
It's also a peeve of mine that they again only included a few tracks on the previous concert (Take Back the City) on the Up To Now DVD! Why not a full live concert DVD. Surely a band that have sold nearly 10 million albums have enough fans to have a concert DVD that's more recent than 2005 (before the big hits of Run, Chasing Cars and others!
Anyway, the CD, othere'll review it better than me so all I'll say is Mr Lightbody is an amazing song writer so it'd get several stars if he was reading the lyrics :)

This album is getting some surprisingly mixed reviews here which is a shame. I am not the biggest SP fan, BUT this album does feel like they were on a roll when writing and recording it. I even think this could be their 'Sargeant Pepper' moment - it's that consistently strong if a little dark and gloomy at times. Tracks like 'This isn't everything you are', 'Fallen Empires', 'New York' and 'Called out in the dark' are both anthemic and somewhat menacing. Snow Patrol are almost becoming the thinking man's Colplay, but still seem to play second fiddle to them.

However, compared with Coldplay's somewhat overproduced Mylo album, this album is rich in texture and style. 'Fallen Empires' for example is like being hit between the eyeballs with something heavy - it's just very powerful stuff. Is there a 'Chasing Cars' on here? Well no, but there are plenty of close to moments when you feel Gary Lightbody is a fine songwriter and lyricist. 'New York', for example, contains a load of great lyrics about loneliness ... 'if you were here instead of...'.

So, it's definitely not an album to get out at a party but then we have plenty of stuff like that around. This is more deep and meaningful and very welcome for that.

Although it has a sadder tone to previous albums, it still manages to pack a punch. The choruses are very catchy and his lyrics are as always, very good. "This Isn't Everything You Are" is a standout track, but the others are very close by, "Garden Rules" and "In the End" are personal favorites.