Old Posts #2: Coldplay

As bands become more popular their ideas tend to go one of two directions: either the blandness equation, wherein the band becomes way less interesting as time goes on, repeating their same ideas and tricks over and over (some examples: Elvis Presley, recent U2 and, as much as I love him, Bruce Springsteen) or the ambition equation wherein the band begins to look to weird sources and ideas, most of the time from non-rock music, for inspiration (examples: Radiohead, 90's U2 and Elvis Cotstello). Now, a lot of people tend to assume that the second option is, by default, the best, but that isn't necessarily the case; U2 made two horribly uneven dance-inflected albums in their post-Achtung Baby 90's hangover and Costello made bizarre, nigh-unlistenable, records with classical musicians and Burt Bacharach. Furthermore, people like Springsteen can coast on one sound with not very much in the way of variation partially because they're good songwriters and partially because their core sound is pretty damn great to begin with. I think that the ideal for this is a band like Radiohead, who subsumed many influences over their career but always sounded like Radiohead, no matter what they were doing.

Coldplay seems to have followed this model, as with many other things, the way Radiohead did. Viva La Vida, their new album, expands and redefines their sound to include new instrumentation and ideas but it always sounds like Coldplay, for better or worse.

Now, Coldplay get a lot of shit for being low-impact and overly soft but that's why I've always sort of liked them, they took musical ideas from people like Radiohead and Jeff Buckley and streamlined them into songs that had serious hooks and soothing atmospherics, perfect for spacing out to as well as nice treats when they would turn up on the radio (which they often did). Though this new album does not contain any of the slow-motion ballads that Coldplay have staked their career on (the closest we get to "Scientist" territory is in the intros or codas of the songs, which tend to be piano-and-voice affairs), everything here sounds like a Coldplay song, partially because Chris Martin's cooing falsetto is instantly recognizable (though, on "Yes", he dips into a lower register and still sounds pretty good) and partially because the band seems incapable of writing a song without a big hook (even the instrumental intro "Life In Technicolor" has a memorable guitar line and some wordless shouts to render it pop). These songs all have instant-pleasure moments, whether it's the "if you love me" bit in "Violet Hill", the church bells that introduce the title track's chorus or the "la, la, la"s in "Cemeteries Of London".

As for the sonic details, much was made of the band's decision to hire Brian Eno to produce and he does bring a lot of his signature sonic touch to the record. Particularily, Eno's fascination with non-western musical tones informs a lot of the songs here. "Lost" has burbling Indian percussion, big hand claps and a vaguely eastern organ drone, "Strawberry Swing" has afropop guitars and a winding, semi-Asian melody, parts of "Yes" sound like krautrock if it was made for pop radio and so on. However, Eno doesn't exactly tear down Coldplay's sound and remake it from the ground up, as he did with U2 on Achtung Baby, he simply augments the songs with new musical elements while not changing their core ideas.

And, ultimately, I wouldn't want to hear Coldplay go in an entirely experimental direction, they're too good at doing the big arena-anthems and this is their strongest set of tunes yet. The band might not have abandoned their core sound entirely, as I'm sure many would wish, but they've changed it enough that it might gain them new fans without abandoning the old ones and I can't fault them for that, they're a populist band at heart and if this album gives their concertgoers ten new reasons to cheer, sway and hold their lighters (or cellphones, I suppose) up in a packed stadium, Coldplay have done their job.