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Tuesday, June 24, 2008
New Coldplay: Fabulous
Today’s disc, and a good one:
Coldplay
VIVA LA VIDA
Have you noticed what happens to rock bands that hit a certain point of fame and popularity? After an album or two, there seems to emerge this weird groundswell of critics, somber fans and other cognoscenti who start to pressure on the group to be different. Usually, there is an insistence that it needs to be “edgier,” or “experimental,” and the conversation about the musicians in question seems to change — to turn on this idea that in order for them to grow and mature, they need to produce music that sounds different from what they’ve done to make themselves so popular in the first place.
And thus has Coldplay — which over three studio CDs has sold more than 30 million albums of its heavy, high-minded, soaringly melodic soft rock and become close to being the biggest band in the world — found itself faced with this conundrum. Typically true to its crowd-pleasing nature, it has decided not to resist, but accept the challenge — declaring in interviews that “Viva La Vida” is its “political” album, and one on which it dabbles in unusual sounds and songcraft.
Maybe so. But bully for Coldplay that it also turns the entire conversation on its head by doing the “experiment” on its own terms, and nobody else’s. This is a fine album indeed, one on which the British quartet offers some new ideas that pull it closer together as a band and subtly illuminate its collective musical imagination. If the pressure to grow into something different has sidetracked or scuttled other performers, it’s only made Coldplay better.
If Chris Martin’s fluttery falsetto had threatened to become the pre-eminent, defining mark of the band’s sound, new producer Brian Eno, who made his mark in the 1980s with U2, Talking Heads and other groundbreakers, has driven his voice a lot deeper into the mix and turned it into an intriguing, useful instrument that sounds better surrounded by his mates. On “Yes,” Martin’s voice becomes a floating, wordless presence that wafts dreamily in and out of the whirlwind cascade of Jonny Buckland’s guitars.
Listen to the beats and structures on this album. The title track is a minuet with kettle drums thrumming in the background; the fabulous “Lost!” rides on a rolling wave of bass drum and hand claps that sound like they’re keeping time in a Shaker service — all emerging from a church organ that blooms into an unearthly swell. Just when you think they’re about to go all Arcade Fire on us, there’s Buckland’s guitar again — chiming in and grounding what, by the time Martin hits the chorus, is most definitely a Coldplay song. One of their best ever, in fact.
Martin’s lyrics have always been in the light-impressionistic mode, and “Viva La Vida,” which is subtitled “Death and All His Friends,” finds him a little more serious about what it all means. Ghosts, cemeteries and memories of departed friends flit in and out of his usual ruminations on the meaning and power of love, which ends up being the answer to everything. They’re still a soft-rock band with a sensitive singer and lots of female fans, you know.
But they’ve also turned in a pop album that opens with an instrumental that features a hammer dulcimer, of all things, and a magical Middle Eastern beat. Didn’t see that coming.
Bottom line: This is the best work yet from a band that’s unafraid to sound pretty, and which now has decided it also want to sound smart — smarter than their meanest critics, in fact. Well done.
Grade: A
iPod picks: “Lost!”; “Strawberry Swing”; “Viva La Vida.”
