Album: Snow Patrol, Fallen Empires (Fiction)

Gary Lightbody suffered, he admits, a bout of writer's block in the run-up to Fallen Empires.

It was evidently followed by an even more severe outbreak of writer's diarrhoea, because the sixth album from Snore Patrol is also the longest. It's an hour of radio-friendly pop-rock in a Deacon Blue meets pre-ironic U2 vein, all over-reverbed vocals and mildly modish electronics, and will see them continue riding Coldplay's slipstream to the arena circuit.