LISTENING STATION: Snow Patrol’s ‘Fallen Empires’

Fallen Empires

Snow Patrol

Fiction/Interscope

★★★

After hitting European shores late last year, Snow Patrol’s sixth album makes its American debut this week, bringing the music industry’s Christmas vacation to an end with another collection of stadium-sized pop-rock songs.

“Fallen Empires” desperately wants to be the “weird” album in Snow Patrol’s catalog, the place where Gary Lightbody and his band of melancholic Irishmen break from the mainstream and embrace something artsier. Like U2’s “Achtung Baby,” it flirts with electronica and European dance music, grafting both genres onto Snow Patrol’s poppy bedrock. Never before has the group tried this hard to distance itself from what is conventionally popular.

The results are mixed, but “Fallen Empires” is still Snow Patrol’s finest album since 2003’s “Final Straw.” It’s also the most dense, packed with 14 songs that move between piano-based instrumentals and guitar-fueled epics.

Mr. Lightbody is still a devotee of simple, circular melodies. Songs such as “The President” and “Lifening” are built upon straightforward hooks that repeat every 10 seconds, leaving little mystery after the first few cycles, but he sings each track over varied backdrops of strings, brass, woodwinds and electronics, which help breathe new life into the most simple of melodies.

Enough lighter-hoisting anthems are sprinkled throughout the mix to placate those who prefer their Snow Patrol songs big and bombastic. “In The End,” with its falsetto vocals and climactic guitar riffs, sounds as familiar as any of the band’s past hits. But “I’ll Never Let Go” - a gospel-rock song in the vein of the Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” complete with keening background vocals from American folksinger Lissie - packs a punch without exploring well-worn territory.

Is “Fallen Empires” the 21st century’s “Achtung Baby?” Hardly. That album was a game changer for an entire industry, whereas this feels like a long-overdue makeover for a band whose sound had grown stale. Still, it’s the boldest artistic statement of Snow Patrol’s career.

For the Good Times

The Little Willies

Milking Bull Records

★★★1/2

The Little Willies didn’t write a single note on “For the Good Times,” a covers album dedicated to old country staples and forgotten hillbilly tunes. Even so, they treat each shuffling backbeat and twangy melody as their own, honoring the original songwriters without resorting to copycat re-creations of the material.

Norah Jones is the real star here, even if she shares lead vocals with band member Richard Julian. It’s her cabaret voice and nimble-fingered piano chords that take center stage, steering most of the songs into slightly jazzy territory and adding a womanly spin to material once performed by a man. She is just as competent on the female-centric songs, too, adding some modern-day girl power to Loretta Lynn’s “Fist City” and singing Dolly Parton’s “Jolene” with sad, sotto voce resignation.

Still, “For the Good Times” isn’t a showcase for Miss Jones’ star power as much as a display of what she can do with the right lineup. On “Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves,” she duets with Mr. Julian while guitarist Jim Campilongo plays spaghetti western riffs in the background. “Lovesick Blues” splits the difference between Elsie Clark’s original performance and Hank Williams’ raw, yodel-filled cover. The band keeps things homespun and relatively relaxed throughout, with performances that sound as though they were captured in one inspired recording session as opposed to a series of overdubs.

Are the Little Willies the world’s best cover band? Perhaps, but “For the Good Times” doesn’t quite feel like a covers album. These performances are fresh and inviting, reverent toward the original recordings but hardly reliant on them as a blueprint. Good times, indeed.

Van Halen gets ready to jump

After more than a decade of botched reunions, Van Halen is back with a new studio album and accompanying tour.

“A Different Kind of Truth,” the band’s first record with original frontman David Lee Roth since 1984, will be released Feb. 7, followed two weeks later with the kickoff of a 45-date national tour.

Van Halen celebrated the upcoming release by performing Thursday at Cafe Wha?, a tiny New York City club once owned by Mr. Roth’s uncle. For those who didn’t catch the Cafe Wha? performance, Van Halen is releasing a music video for “Tattoo,” the album’s lead single.