Love, Life and Death

Last week I joked around a bit about the new Coldplay album, based in part on an actual study suggesting their music is most likely to put people to sleep. While that was a spot of fun, I'll call this entry right here my actual review of "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends."

Currently, Coldplay have put a small delay onto their tour dates because they're working on getting some balls. Yes, their live show is set to predominantly feature balls, and that's apparently supposed to be quite the spectacular sight. Sort of like Kanye's "Glow in the Dark" tour, but with, you know, balls instead of some ego-feeding pre-programmed spaceship whatever. I, for one, am happy to hear Coldplay are finally getting balls of some sort, because they sure could use some in their music. And that's what we like to call a "double entendre," in case you didn't quite get what I was driving at.

In the most basic sense, Coldplay make wuss rock, albeit generally engaging and hook-driven wuss rock. I mean that in the nicest way, actually. I consider myself an appreciator of Coldplay, though I try and do that from a distance. "Parachutes" was and still is a great album, and "A Rush of Blood to the Head" was nearly as charming. Of course "X&Y" was a small misstep and pretty much proved that Coldplay was working from a formula in creating their songs. Should I even mention how the song "Fix You" is about the sappiest song I can recall in recent memory? Let's skip that discussion and just say the band had gotten stale and increasingly sleepy. It's been all downhill for Coldplay since they first debuted.

Brian Eno steps in to do what he's done for countless other bands- make Coldplay sound fresh again. Things are spicier and "modified" on "Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends," and I'd call Coldplay a better band for it. There are classy string arrangements. There is less piano. The songs are more vibrant and energetic on the whole compared to the last album, despite having an underlying theme of life and death behind them. There's less forced hooks and more of a reliance on genuine melody. Chris Martin's lyrics feel like they're more smartly written, even at times taking the perspective of character narratives.

And despite all these changes, I can't help but think that Coldplay still sounds mostly the same. They're still that arena rock band playing music within their comfort zones. Now it just comes wrapped in a more dressed up package designed to tell us that things are "different." Me, I'm just a tad upset the band didn't take more risks with their sound. Still, the changes they've made are better than none at all, and proved to me that on some level I still enjoy Coldplay's music. I guess I was hoping for some sort of night and day transition like Radiohead did with "OK Computer" and "Kid A." Eno should have pushed them harder to break out of that shell they'd created for themselves and forced them into doing something riskier and less appealing to a mass audience. This was, in many ways, Coldplay's big chance to gain some key respect from critics across the globe, who could have called them musical revolutionaries in their own right, as the cover art of "Viva La Vida..." might be trying to suggest in the first place.

Let me just end this by putting Coldplay in the same realm that so many others have put them in: a cross between U2 and Radiohead. Actually they're much closer to U2 in the huge anthems and Chris Martin's increasingly Bono-like stage moves, but then again Coldplay has not been shy about their intentions to steal elements from other bands. While you can say their music holds up to a certain standard that makes the band original in their own right, there's very little denying some of the blatant similarities. Generally I'm okay with that because the music is just compelling enough, but when all's said and done I just wish Coldplay would make a legitimate attempt to strike their own path away from all the comparisons. It'd be nice to say there's a definite "Coldplay sound" instead of suggesting the band "sounds like" somebody else. When Coldplay finally does sit up and attempts something original, if they ever do that, I plan on giving them some kind words of praise- even if the music is terrible. At the very least, that applause will be simply because they chose to break away from the box they've wrapped themselves inside and striven to do something truly nobody expected.

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Labels: coldplay