First big gig of 2012, at the newly re-named Manchester Arena. Straight up four piece guitar band – fairly standard.

I used to quite like Snow Patrol. Some of the album tracks on breakthrough album Final Straw were pretty special (Somewhere a Clock is Ticking, for example), and earlier LP Songs for Polar Bears showed some real promise, and had a really lo-fi edge to it. Ah, them were the days..

As is often the way, a ‘rock’ band is lured by the bright lights and dollar signs of record labels and the origins of a band become distant memories, jaded by the promise of album sales, prime-time tv drama endorsements and radio airplay. Yes, Snow Patrol have (in my opinion) gone down the same road as Kings of Leon and Muse in recent years, and sold out. They’ve been Grey’s Anatomy’d.

This became even more apparent when the band took to the stage at the MCR. Gary Lightbody has long since changed since the last time I saw the band. I remember the lanky frontman stood behind a black telecaster dressed in a scruffy tshirt and jeans, true to the alternative rock model. Nowadays he can be found prancing around, no guitar in sight, dressed in a ‘cool’ leather bikers jacket looking like a Westlife auditionee. Of the three songs we got to shoot, he held a guitar for HALF a song. Shocking. For the remainder of our allocation he either sung with his eyes shut, or covered his face with his hands, almost treating the microphone like a harmonica. Bad times. That said, he did make amends by heading down to the crowd for half a song, which made for some good tog fodder.