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.

WELCOME BACK TO THE STAGE OF HISTORY

If you really need a detailed background on me, just check out my Facebook page. But since if you're reading this, you probably already know me, I'm not going to give much of an introduction.

I'm feeling sort of lazy right now, so, I'm going to write out my current thoughts in point form:

- People I know are really into that movie Zeitgeist but, for the most part, I don't get it. The religion section makes sense, sure, but it also presents things that anybody could tell you as if they're grand revelations. The 9/11 section makes a few decent ponts (mostly in regards to the lack of preparation) but is mostly Loose Change-esque BS. And don't get me started on the banking part. The level of paranoia that went into that movie is just insane, and I'm not even a guy who is particularly trustful of the government but you can take that shit to a level even I'm not comfortable with.

There's also the general problem with all of these conspiracy movies: Namely, if the conspiracy is so well-organized and wide-ranging as they claim it is, why are the movies themselves allowed to exist?

- I'm of two minds about Valentine's Day: One the one hand, it's obviously commercial Hallmark-holiday BS. On the other, I'd probably feel a lot better about life in general if I had someone to celebrate it with.

- The last episode of Lost was sort of boring, barring Sayid's take-down of that med-tech. I still like the show, but as it's starting to come to a close, I'm worried that the drive to answer all the questions could make the individual episodes less entertaining. We're probably not gonna see another "The Constant" (which is great but only somewhat connected to the overrall plot; in fact, it could almost be a stand-alone thing). However, Jin still being alive at the end of the episode made my day.

- Why is 24 going into an inane "Find the president's husband", kidnapping plot? That's season one stuff; the death of one dude doesn't cut it anymore, 24 writers (even if that dude is Colm Feore). This had better be just a front for another massive-scale-damage plot by the terrorists. Dubacku's conversation with his girlfriend at the end was hilarious, though.

- "You Found Me" is basically the perfect melding of every form of popular music made by white people in the past 5 years. It's like Coldplay and Keane got together and got some uber-sincere emo-band guy to sing and write lyrics, it's awesome. I have zero interest in listening to The Fray's actual album, but this one song is pretty great.

- Crank 2 looks even more gleefully insane and offensive than the first one, which is saying something. It's like the directors went "What minority groups did we not offend last time?". The answer: Latinos and Asians. At least judging from the trailer, which features kung-fu master dudes with long eyebrows, dragon-tattoo sporting Yakuza goons, a guy who looks like the one dude from Ichi The Killer and fat Cubans driving sportscars. It's a gaggle of stereotypes and stupidity and I wouldn't have it any other way. One potential flaw: Amy Smart's character is now a stripper; that doesn't make a whole lot of sense since she was the "nice, naive girl" who provided contrast to the Maxim model-types otherwise featured in the first film.

- Coldplay should win Album Of The Year, not because they made the best album but because it's the best out of the ones nominated. Radiohead's album was fine but it was also regressive for them. What I heard of Ne-Yo (i.e the singles) was bland, formulaic modern R & B . Raising Sand was inconsistent; the good parts were great but you could tell when they were inspired and when they weren't. Same story, Lil Wayne (he also fell into the typical rap-album trap of "make one song for everyone", it's just less noticeable with him because he's more versatile than, say, Nas). My vote for best album would probably be either Kanye's 808s and Heartbreak or The '59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem.

- I also do not care about this whole Coldplay/Joe Santriani situation. Santriani might be a brilliant guitar player but Coldplay run circles around him in terms of making actually good songs. In the words of Metallica, sad but true.

I guess that's all I have to say for now. If you'd like to comment on anything, leave a, uh, comment.