Snow Patrol Announce Wildness, Their First New Album in Seven Years

Post-Brit-pop rockers Snow Patrol have announced their first new album in seven years, Wildness, out on May 25 via Republic Records.

After Snow Patrol finished touring in support of their 2012 album, Fallen Empires, the band’s members shifted their focus to their own respective projects. Lead singer and songwriter Gary Lightbody played with his side project band, Tired Pony, which includes members of Belle and Sebastian, R.E.M, Reindeer Section and Fresh Young Fellows, and he also moved to L.A. to write songs for films, and established pop artists like Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift.

Lightbody says of the time since Snow Patrol’s last album:

Sometimes it takes you five years to write the thing. Like now. And you know for sure when you finish an album like that, where you’ve poured [sic] over every detail and put every atom of yourself into it, everything makes sense and I bet you I’m never not proud of this record.

Lightbody says the central themes on the band’s new album include coming to grips with the chaotic modern world and trying to rekindle the lost connections between one another. He says of the inspiration behind the new album’s title and themes:

There are many types of wildness, but I think it can be distilled into two: the wildness of the modern age, all it’s confusion, illogic and alienation, and a more ancient wildness. Something primal, alive and beautiful that speaks to our true connectivity, our passion, our love, our communion with nature and each other. This is the kind of wildness the album is centered around. The loss of it. Trying to reconnect with it. To remember it.

Lightbody also says that their latest LP is inspired by his dad’s battle with dementia. He says, “I think the album is defined by memory in a lot of ways including my father’s loss of memory.” The album was produced by their longtime collaborator Jacknife Lee and is described as an effort to stay true to their anthemic stadium-rock style while adapting their sound to new and fast-changing times.

The band’s new album trailer features a clip of their melodic, string-filled new song, “Life On Earth,” with footage of Lightbody traveling in a spaceship.

Watch Snow Patrol’s album trailer below, and check the new album artwork and tracklist further down. You can preorder Wildness here.

Wildness Album Art:

Wildness Tracklist:
01. Life On Earth
02. Don’t Give In
03. Heal Me
04. Empress
05. A Dark Switch
06. What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get?
07. A Youth Written In Fire
08. Soon
09. Wild Horses
10. Life And Death