Snow Patrol has announced details of a 20th anniversary edition of its classic record Final Straw, with a previously unreleased demo version of anthemic hit “Chocolate” out now. The album will be released on two CDs and digital versions on April 7, with a special double vinyl edition following on August 4 to mark the record’s original release date 20 years on. The anniversary edition includes 23 additional tracks, inclusive of a raft of never before heard demos, B-sides, live tracks from the band’s August 2004 show at London’s Somerset House and previously commercially unreleased track “Tired.”
“I still have days where I don’t believe much of the last 20 years,” writes Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody in extensive liner notes accompanying the release. “In the back of my mind, I’m still waiting for the tap on the shoulder and someone saying, ‘you’re not supposed to be here’. In a lot of ways, it’s a gift we were given. We’ve never taken any of what happened after the release of this album for granted.”
Alongside Gary’s recollections, the package also includes writings on Final Straw from the BBC’s Jo Whiley and Fiction Records MD Jim Chancellor.
Final Straw was Snow Patrol’s third album and the band’s major label debut. Written and recorded during a make-or-break period for the quartet, it set them on the path to becoming one of the biggest British guitar groups of the 21st century. The 2006 single “Chasing Cars,” taken from Final Straw’s follow-up Eyes Open, is one of the biggest songs of all-time, a five-times Platinum hit with streams of one billion on Spotify and three million combined sales.
Final Straw, though, is where everything began to fall in place for Snow Patrol. Propelled by the stirring ballad “Run,” which has over 127,000,000 Spotify plays, and urgent, hooky singalongs such as “Chocolate” and “Spitting Games,” Final Straw went on to sell over four million copies worldwide, inclusive of 1.8 million sales in the UK going six-times platinum in the process. Nothing would ever be the same for Snow Patrol after its release. Here’s to revisiting the record that changed everything.