If Final Straw introduced Snow Patrol to the mainstream and Eyes Open cemented the band's popularity, then A Hundred Million Suns is the group's ultimate bid for stardom, its slick production and sonic uplift designed to catapult Snow Patrol into the upper echelons of modern music. Like "Chasing Cars," the mega-single from Snow Patrol's previous album, tracks like "Take Back the City" and "If There's a Rocket Tie Me to It" are slyly repetitive — their hooks are cyclic, each comprising only a handful of notes, and their straightforward familiarity helps maximize the songs' singalong potential. But A Hundred Million Suns also features more curve balls than the band's past catalog, from "Lifeboats" (an icy love song with synthesizer glissandos and falsetto harmonies) to "The Golden Floor," whose handclap-and-stomp intro recalls the light hip-hop flavor of OneRepublic's "Apologize." This is where Snow Patrol sound best — at the intersection between marketable pop/rock and something more ch...