Coldplay - X&Y

My interest in Coldplay waxes and wanes depending on how mopey I'm feeling. Chris Martin is a bit of a sadsack, dwelling in a personal space fraught with a meloncholy of the 18th century British variety: there's lots of laborious sighs, wistful navel gazing, and the feeling that this will all end in someone dying of consumption or tuberculosis. Martin's lyrics are so introspective that you feel like he's taken a page from his diary, set it to gently-swelling, anthematic Brit-pop, and recorded it for general consumption.

Which isn't to say it's bad music. I really enjoyed Rush of Blood to the Head, and I have to admit that Martin & Co. have a knack for soaring choruses and catchy hooks. But I'd heard that X&Y was ballad-heavy, and with a band like Coldplay--who start out pretty clearly in ballad territory on most of their tracks anyway--this is saying something. I'm not real big on ballads, to be honest: it all seems a little too forced anymore, and how many ways can you really write a song about heartbreak and wanting the girl back, anyway?

Well, Coldplay don't reinvent the wheel on X&Y. In fact, the album follows the pattern established on Coldplay's previous releases almost too closely. Ultimately, that's the album's biggest weakness: it's too by-the-numbers, too similar to its predecessor. The songs still sound good--as I said, Coldplay has a knack for catchy hooks and all--but it's a fairly predictable record. You can tell where the guitar fill will slot in, how the piano bit will start out the song, when Chris Martin will hit his perfect "I sound like my balls still haven't dropped" falsetto in a chorus. There's no surprises on the record, and that's what keeps it from being a mind-blowing album.

This isn't to say that X&Y isn't very, very good. It is. The band have a phenomenal sense of songcraft, and everything is done with the precision of a band much more mature than Coldplay's three proper albums suggests. And while the songs may not rock out in the conventional sense--but who really expects them to?--there's some fantastic uptempo numbers on the record that are hard not to like.

And that's really just it: it's hard not to like this record for what it is. It tries to be arty, but it's middle-of-the-road arty, so it doesn't alienate folks. The lack of surprises does have one positive point: you know the songs are going to be good. Tracks like "White Shadows" and "Speed of Sound" soar like vintage U2, sans the ubiquitous echo delay effect The Edge put on every guitar part between 1980 and 1991 (though even that pops up a couple of times on X&Y).

There's an earnestness to the record that makes you want to alternately nod your head in total agreement with the sentiment Martin is expressing and smack him and tell him to take himself a little less seriously. Honestly, he gets a little too wound-up in his navel gazing. He wants to be the next Bono, but he lacks the lyrical sweep of Bono. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing: Bono's social opinions are all well and good, but he tends to shove it into your face without the benefit of subtlety sometimes ("Bullet the Blue Sky," anyone?).

Ultimately, X&Y is a solid album that sticks with a proven formula. This keeps it from being a classic, but it's definitely worth a listen. Why fix what's not broken, right?

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Coldplay, "White Shadows"