Snow Patrol

Local music fans can open their gifts a little early this year. That's because Snow Patrol and the Smashing Pumpkins are coming to Denver to play a pair of intimate-sized concerts this weekend.

Snow Patrol headlines a special KBCO holiday show at Englewood's Gothic Theatre on Sunday, while the (partially) reunited Pumpkins play the Ogden Theatre in Denver on Friday.

But that's not the only reason Snow Patrol's coming to town. The band also is passing through Denver to promote its new CD, A Hundred Million Suns.

"It's nice to start off the New Year playing intimate shows," Nathan Connolly, Snow Patrol's lead guitarist, said. "Next year we'll hit the arenas to promote our new record.

"Now we're getting back to the basics and playing for the fans."

History lesson

It took a solid 14 years of performing for Snow Patrol to earn its international base of loyal fans.

Snow Patrol started its career at Dundee University in Scotland, but it wasn't until the Scottish/Irish act released its 2006 record Eyes Open that things really took off for the band outside of the U.K.

"I've been with the band for six or seven years," Connolly said. "What's kept us going has been our stubbornness, our love of music and the need to better ourselves and the music.

"I think our last record took off because we'd become better songwriters. We also had the right producer and record label. We didn't have a master plan -- we just made the record."

Eyes Open contained Snow Patrol's hot-selling single "Chasing Cars." The emotive song earned the band more than 100,000 radio plays in the U.K. and 2 million downloads in the U.S.

Snow Patrol sold more than 5 million copies of the CD and went on to become the top-selling U.K. band of that year.

To boost the band's popularity, Snow Patrol came over to the U.S. and earned massive radio play on Triple A (KBCO's format) and modern-rock stations.

"We toured for two years with Eyes Open," Connolly said. "That record let us do what we love doing. We played for much bigger audiences and visited all these different countries, but we knew it was finally time to take a break."

New album

The Snow Patrol players took a six-month break to catch up with their families and plan the new album.

Connolly said the band didn't want to copy its successful CD, so the group really put a lot of thought into the creation of A Hundred Million Suns.

"We were very careful and very aware. We didn't want to repeat ourselves," Connolly said. "We wanted to move forward and push away to something that would definitely challenge us.

"We wanted to experiment with the lyrics and melody -- to prove that we were able to go down other avenues with our songwriting."

The band even created a massive 16-minute number to close out the record.

Dubbed "The Lightning Strike," the lengthy Snow Patrol tune features three separate songs that are linked together into one epic number.

"I know it seems ridiculous to link up all these songs, but they seemed to fit together," Connolly said. "Some people are wondering why we have a 16-minute song on the record, but we're very proud of it."

Snow Patrol also experimented with the recording process on A Hundred Million Suns.

The band recorded part of the CD in rural Ireland and part of the record in busy Berlin.

"We thought we'd start the record in Ireland. It felt like the right move," Connolly said. "We had a lot of songs we weren't sure about and rural Ireland had this comforting effect on us.

"Then we went to Berlin. It's such a vibrant city and it has a lot of musical history. Berlin made us feel free, confident and inspired us to try new things."

Connolly said he feels that A Hundred Million Suns is the perfect culmination of the time Snow Patrol spent recording in Ireland and Berlin.

On the road

Snow Patrol's new CD came out at the end of October, but the band wanted to test the waters before heading out on massive arena tour.

The U.K. group decided to launch the record in the U.S. with a select tour of Christmas radio shows.

That's how KBCO landed Sunday's Snow Patrol show at the Gothic.

"We've gotten so used to playing large arenas, but we'd really like to play smaller venues more often," Connolly said. "This is giving is the opportunity to come back in a different way."

Snow Patrol will finish this run of shows and get ready for 2009.

"We're heading out on a full-scale arena tour of the U.K.," Connolly said. "We should hit the U.S. in May or June. We're just looking forward to getting back to the routine of playing every night."