A Hundred Million Suns by Snow Patrol

A Hundred Million Suns, Snow Patrol's fifth studio album, arrived on Fiction and Geffen in October 2008, and it's the sound of a band trying to follow "Chasing Cars" and the colossal success of Eyes Open without simply photocopying it. They cut it through the summer of 2008 at Hansa Studios in Berlin and Grouse Lodge in Ireland, with Jacknife Lee, their longtime producer and a man who has also worked the desk for U2, R.E.M. and Bloc Party, steering again.

Gary Lightbody's voice is still the warm, aching center of everything, but Nathan Connolly's guitars swell bigger and brighter, and Jonny Quinn, Paul Wilson and Tom Simpson fill out a sound built for enormous rooms. "Crack the Shutters" is the tender, sunlit moment. The whole thing reaches for the sky, and more often than not it gets there.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.