My Coldplay.com

This is a big week for Snow Patrol. On Sunday their fourth album, Eyes Open, was certified as the bestselling UK release of 2006, with sales of 1.2 million and counting.

On Tuesday the anthemic rock quartet ambled onstage to the deafening cheers of a capacity crowd at the cavernous NIA in Birmingham. “My God, this is the biggest place we’ve ever played!” proclaimed Gary Lightbody, the lead singer.

From Belfast via Glasgow, Snow Patrol have risen virtually without trace in their decade-long career. Their fuzzy-sweet, radio-friendly sound is pleasant enough but strangely anonymous and anodyne. Imagine Keane without their brooding sexual magnetism. Or an entire band of James Blunts.

But it is impossible to review Snow Patrol without invoking the C-word. Like Tony Blair, Lightbody is a Coldplay kind of guy. Like Chris Martin, he writes monumentally soppy anthems of romantic loss and existential unease, outwardly passionate but vague on emotional specifics. Both bands favour the kind of broad-brush, supersized sincerity that crosses cultural borders, which might explain why Eyes Open has been lodged in the US album chart for the past six months. Irony and ambiguity, those priceless base elements in much of the best British rock, are notable by their absence.

Coldplay comparisons were certainly hard to avoid in Birmingham during Somewhere a Clock is Ticking and How to be Dead, with their softly chiming guitars and politely yearning vocals. But as songwriters, Snow Patrol are simply not in the same league.

There were a handful of genuine show stoppers in the set, notably the former singles Chasing Cars and Run, each a colossal terrace chant built around a heart-swelling singalong chorus. But, for a band with four albums behind them, there were also far too many faceless, graceless, makeweight numbers.

For all their massive popularity, Snow Patrol still fiercely divide the critics. Many regard their evolution from indie nobodies to Coldplay-esque arena-fillers as proof of soulless, ruthless careerism. That is debatable, but Lightbody can undoubtedly irritate in his relentless attempts to appear sensitive and humble. There were many such moments in Birmingham when his grainy vibrato whine struck a gratingly false note. At their worst, Lightbody’s band are the musical equivalent of a Richard Curtis rom-com, their undeniable charms drowned out by cloying sentiment and calculated whimsy.

Of course, the broad church of pop has many vestibules. There is room enough for clean-cut choirboys such as Snow Patrol, Keane and Embrace in the congregation. All the same, a little more grit and wit may save Lightbody from perpetually being cast as Martin’s drippy understudy. Some songs sounded almost like happy-clappy Christian rock.

Rounding off their set with the polished angst of Open Your Eyes, Snow Patrol departed on a tidal wave of courteous, well-behaved hysteria. Their future is clearly bright. But being impressively huge is not the same as being hugely impressive.

TheTimes