When Parachutes was released some five years ago, few would have imagined that a mere two albums later, the four mild-mannered lads with a passion for the straight-forward would become rock’s expected heirs to U2’s throne. But, thanks to a deceptively-simple piano line that refused to vacate pop consciousness months after its expiration date and a malaise-filled crater of musical competition, Coldplay—the little train that could—has made clear its course and, with the release of their highly-anticipated third LP, world conquest is now destined to take place.
It isn’t difficult to chart where tropical monsoon music industry began its destructive course. The first time I heard “Yellow,” that ubiquitous, sun-peeks-through-clouds lovesick drop of pop heaven, I stopped whatever mundane task was occupying me in my tracks. There was something about that voice, that seductive Martin falsetto which has since claimed the hearts of millions of teenage girls (and less readily-admitting boys) which I found irresistible. Upon listening to the album in its entirety, I wasn’t unimpressed so much as unengaged. My young ears were at the time attuned to the throat-wringing guitars of RATM types, and Parachutes’ hushed, sleepy-eyed tone passed beneath me like a low tide upon sandy calves. But I was intrigued. Upon repeat listens, the nuances of the band’s playing, particularly Martin’s heavy-heart lyricism and young-Buckley vocal styling coupled with Buckland’s intelligent guitar work, held me captive. Coldplay epitomized the romance of my rainy English fantasies, where pin-striped white collar folks finish lonesome pints of ale before walking home through street-lamped winter nights. I saw many a night through to the soothing notes of that album. Coldplay were my confidantes, a quartet of thoughtful, articulate mates who offered the gift of catharsis, converting any internal, angsty personal drama of the time as epic as the chiming guitars of “Yellow.”
It took me a while to concede, but that vice-turned grip of ownership I momentarily held over the band had to be relinquished. With a number of British bands, such as the Libertines or Keane, I can maintain a certain level of existential intimacy for ranging periods of time. Some, like the Manic Street Preachers, I gleefully retain property rights to forever without fear of infringement here in the “Blur are one-hit-wonders” States. But with Coldplay, it was a landslide that I could do nothing but knowingly acknowledge. With each viewing of Martin’s goofy, raincoat-shrouded face on MTV ads gushing “And all the things that you do….” I found myself mutedly agreeing with the kid in lunch hall proclaiming “that Yellow band’s pretty fucking dope, yo!” A band of the people, they had become.
Enter college, and the first stage of the Coldplay monsoon phenomenon. Before Rush of Blood’s release, I had read a Martin interview stating that the band was planning on “going big.” Dating back to the Parachutes tour, Martin has been envisioning the band’s leap into the amplified rock leagues of their heroes, and I was saddened to hear of this change in course. If Coldplay were to continue releasing subdued, plaintive pop music for a good decade or so, I would have been perfectly content. But after “In My Place” bounded on to radio waves (“It’s just like “Yellow,” only better!”), followed by the sublime “The Scientist” (still their finest ballad to date) and the universally-revered “Clocks,” the maturation of the bar-gig college boys into a full-blown, air-boxing stadium rock band was complete. But somehow, whether through studio-engineered genius or song-writing precision I’m not sure, Rush of Blood retained the core elements of heart-felt emotion, vocal intimacy and boyish charm which made Coldplay so lovable in the first place. For every souped-up platter of strings and light show-friendly bridge, the group added Martin’s intimate lyrics and songwriting—particularly in “The Scientist,” “Green Eyes” and “Warning Sign”— as worthy counterweights. It was, as Martin had promised, indeed bigger, while being musically superior and more consistent to boot. But for the most part, Rush of Blood retained the attributes I most loved from Parachutes, making it their best work to date.
Enter Coldplay, version 3.0, replete with mathematical artwork and a studio saga even more dramatic than the last. Having risen into the major leagues with their second release, this was supposed to be the album that topples all competitors in some new rock order where benign wallflower becomes interplanetary, all-revealing sage. X and Y is an album the band has pored over with the jittery nerves and hyper-insecurity that only a perfectionist like Martin knows. In promotion interviews, he jokes that he wanted to make the “best thing anybody’s ever listened to.” Serious or not, X and Y’s overly-calculated sculpting and fine tuning is clearly evident throughout. As has been mentioned, it is more an outgrowth of Rush of Blood than a revolution, adding even more layers, more instrumentation and generally more volume to a soundscape once famous for its minimalism and space. And, false-references to Kraftwerk (“Talk” lifts the main hook from “Computer Love”) and krautrock aside, this really is space music, finely engineered to provide maximum stadium lift-off efficiency and to propel lighters into motion faster than ever before. Despite this, Coldplay, as much as they follow in the shadows of U2 and Radiohead, are neither and never shall be either of these bands. And though I genuinely enjoy their music, I must acknowledge that they are not suited to assume rock’s mantle. Bono and Bono’s ego may for now rest atop the world happily.
We begin with lead single “Speed of Sound,” the older, more filled-out musical cousin of “Clocks.” The piano hook, a class below that of its predecessor, follows the exact same A-B B-C pattern, as does the rhythm of Champion’s pounding toms. Lyrically, it’s grander in scope than “Clocks,” with Martin waxing philosophical over puzzles and wondrous worldly matter. His tone is reverential, revealing Bono’s growing influence in his geographical reference:
Ideas that you'll never find
All the inventors could never design
The buildings that you put up
Japan and China all lit up
Standing alone, “Speed of Sound” is a fine accomplishment, a majestic piece of song and studio-craft that is more rewarding in its instrumental build-up and possesses a better-developed chorus than “Clocks.” Serving as a transition point between albums, it succeeds in signaling the band’s intent to do what they did well on “Rush of Blood” even better this time around.
Likewise, “Square One,” the ominous, boldly-complex opener, successfully establishes Coldplay’s raison d’etre in a manner reminiscent of “Tourist” from OK Computer or even the band’s own “Politik.” Beginning with ambient synth organ, symbolic of the instrument’s now integral role in their sound, the group throw a bevy of hip 80s musical references across the canvas. The rhythm section has never sounded more like Unforgettable Fire-era U2, Buckland moves adeptly from post-punk staccato to Marquee Moon angular melodicism…hell, Martin even throws in a couple of soccer fan “woah-ohh” chants in the second verse. The sum of its parts is impressive, and if it the tracks which followed “Square One” built upon this arsenal of intelligently-lifted influences, X and Y would be one monster of a record. Regrettably, this is not the case, and music aside, the real disappointment of the album is Martin’s fall from grace from accomplished balladeer to ingratiating, Extreme-era lyrical schtickism.
“You're in control, is there anywhere you wanna go?” he begins, issuing perhaps the most direct call for listener participation in modern musical history. He follows by playing rock psychologist: “You just want somebody listening to what you say,” he emotes, before asking open-endedly: “Is there anybody out there who is lost and hurt and lonely too?”
It’s all a bit too much, isn’t it? The beauty of Martin’s writing, which has always been rather contrived and cliché-ridden, has been the fragmented, loosely cryptic cut of his wordplay, which allowed the singer’s confessional honesty and occasional pastoral romance to connect so satisfyingly with his listener. “I look in your direction/but you pay me no attention,” from “Shiver,” and “You said I'm gonna buy a gun and start a war/If you can tell me something worth fighting for,” from “Rush” exemplify this unusual skill.
Many in the critical community have pinpointed “Swallowed in the Sea” as the album’s biggest red herring, and rightfully so:
And I could write it down
Or spread it all around
Get lost and then get found
And you'll come back to me
Not with blasphemes as raw as these, she won’t. Elsewhere, the digressions are only slightly more forgivable. “When you try your best but you don't succeed” is a sorry line in a children’s fable, let alone the single which is designed and will almost inevitably catapult the band into the stratosphere for summers to come (“Fix You”). And not only does “So you take a picture of something you see/In the future where will I be?” (“Talk”) not follow logically; it’s also symptomatic of an entire album’s worth of misguided vagaries and lazy rhyming couplets. At worst, Martin sounds like a second-grade teacher whose English students have rubbed off on his poems to his wife; at best like an incoherent backpacker, extolling the virtues of his stargazing worldview into awkward if well-intentioned prose.
The problem, I believe, is not Martin himself. He’s a talented songwriter, capable of writing solid hits, particularly Lennon-esque ballads which utilize his rangy, clear-throated singing voice. The real issue is that Martin, in attempting to morph Coldplay into some U2-meets-Radiohead post-Millennial behemoth has sacrificed the gift of subtlety and quietude which has always been and remains the soul of the band. Additionally, not only do his lyrics and, to a lesser degree, the songwriting fall short of expectations, but the album is caught between play-it-safe plinky piano adult pop and electronica/art rock purgatory. X and Y not only largely fails to reach the heights of Rush of Blood, but in attempting to erect a city full of skyscraper hits, only succeeds in constructing the physical shell of their original, ambitious vision.
What does such a hollowed out, metallic world sound like? Well, Prince for one thing. In the most obvious lift of the album, his classic “When Doves Cry” chorus is ripped wholesale in “White Shadows.” The two major ballads, “What If” and “Fix You,” crescendo with the string-synth power of a tidal wave, though both songs are more Carole King B-side than McCartney tunefulness. The rockers are competent if a touch generic, mid-paced and layered with Buckland’s effective guitar flourishes. He has become a force in his own right, an amalgamation of encyclopedic 80s indie and arena-rock, from Echo and the Bunnymen through to the Smiths, while the imprints of the Edge echo pervasively through every delay-channeled note he strikes. Berryman and Champion are about as visible on X and Y as they were on Rush of Blood, never close to the starry level of Radiohead’s rhythm section but close to approaching the rock-solid reliability of Clayton and Mullen. Coldplay is by now firmly established as musical peers to the greatest bands of its own generation, and if it reinvents and really unleashes itself, which it has shown clear flashes of potential to do (“Daylight,” “Square One,” the four-part harmonizing of “Fix You”), the results could be truly spectacular.
But at this point, X and Y provides empirical proof that Coldplay, in its current form, is not prepared to be the band they may one day become, such as U2’s successor. As Erlewine eloquently notes, “where U2 is big in sound, scope, ambition, and intent, Coldplay is ultimately big music about small things, and [X and Y’s] limited, narcissistic point of view is what prevents the quartet from inheriting the title of the biggest and most important band in the world.” Agreed.
“My song is love, is love unknown /And I've got to get that message home,” Martin emotes in the admittedly-moving “A Message.” And he should realize that he doesn’t have to sacrifice his motifs of love, personal examination and self-doubt in order to accomplish his goal of building the most significant rock band of his time. Bono has continued to mine such themes for much of his career. Rather, Coldplay needs to evolve as significantly as they did from Parachutes to Rush of Blood, beyond wool-sweater nicety and hummable piano balladry into an album that stands alone as truly momentous. With X and Y, Coldplay have reached for grand Joshua Tree heights, but despite Martin’s ambition and the band's ability, have only created Rush of Blood’s overwrought, studio-birthed amphetachild.
