Warming Up to Playing Cold

So I read this article in Rolling Stone and I am so excited, I'm going to blog about it.

You see, I love Coldplay. It's no secret.

They are the reason I started listening to legitimate music, and they are the reason I started writing. So really, they are indirectly to thank for forming the bulk of the person I am today. Not bad for four blokes from Middle-England.

Parachutes was a flawless album. And Shiver is one of the greatest unrequited love songs ever written, in my opinion.

A Rush of Blood to the Head picked up where Parachutes left off, and though it has its occaisional weak moment, it is still quite excellent.

Then, in 2005, came X&Y. What to say about their third album? Like Rush of Blood, it picked up where the last album left off. Only this time it was completley unnecessary to do so.

It was stale, uninspired, unimaginative and a pale imitation of their earlier work. They were like a Coldplay cover band who decided to write some original music. So they wrote it in the Coldplay style, only they weren't talented enough to pull it off.

But I feel good about this new album. I think it's important that they challenge themselves with something new and not play it so painfully safe as they did with X&Y.

Before Parachutes had even been conceptualized, and before anyone knew who Chris Martin was or who he was dating or what he was naming his children - Coldplay's music was textured and daring and sonically very interesting. There was a lot of reverbing guitars and generally 'atmospheric' instrumentation. The combination with Chris Martin's famous falsetto and whispering lower register was something quite breath-taking. I'd often wonder why they haven't returned to that (If they do write that kind of song now, it usually ends up as a B-side).

But now it seems their new album won't have Yellow, Clocks, or (God help us all) Speed of Sound.

It seems they're doing something new by going back to something very, very old. And I say good on you, Coldplay. It's about freakin' time.