Read on for a full review of the album...
The Artist - Coldplay
The Album - A Rush Of Blood To The Head
The Song - "In My Place"
Coldplay's newest offering brings us another sweet, emotional tug with a ringing guitar's single string hook. "In My Place" sounds maybe like Dave Matthews in Coldplay's place. Just as perfect in its spot as any album's second song.
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Read on for a full review of the album...
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Most bands who venture risking compiling a concept album - these days it seems - tend to fall flatly, outright, unless they've acquired the taste of a following. This CD however, seems a far cry from what they're unquestionably fit to perform. Which is too bad, since the music biz doesn't give leeway for long even to the majority of good artists. Coldplay are good artists.
If Coldplay can please its fans through the successful touring and touting of this one, in combination with charming the critics with their next album, I'm predicting it'll be done in a smashing way, then it'll be perfect for the band to point out that '...To the Head' is an artistic transition, and album unto itself for select, exclusive listening.
While reviewing this CD, I wondered in several songs, why the sweetly intriguing vocals weren't played up, let looser within his unique style. I'm still wondering. Even if in a predicted way, owe the listeners some amiable recall, lest you lose 'em wayside. Amiable recall of what they've heard before and liked. They'll stick with you, I thought to myself in pulling for these gents.
"Politik" welcomes us in a dark dirge of morbidity, a near drone which lulls us to near tears. That wonderful voice relieves the sad feel a couple of times; but closes out the song does, with eyes downcast. Has that shading of Pink Floyd mastery they've been wont to before.
"God Put A Smile Upon Your Face" opens catchy with what an acoustic guitar is supposed to sound like. Rhythmic, musical, and creating the listener's participation by beckoning just enough strain toward its tension in anticipation, awaiting the relief, demanding a bridge. They supply. In a cool way, the vocals at times remind of ol' Mr. Mojo man himself, and in a momentumous surprise, string us briefly back to echoing patterns found in the Emerson, Lake & Palmer Trilogy album.
"The Scientist" fits, but is a little sleepy. Here the vocal teases but doesn't put too much out.
"Clocks" it's about time! But for the humorless review reader, we trudge on soberly. "Clocks" too, fits, is quite a pacifier, and all by itself numbs us like strong cold medicine. Imagine a sedate, already painless narcoleptic gulping saidsame in a sterile serene waiting room. Effect hence. If you've ever watched a film which zombied you into a sequence which, when it snap-segued to the next, sent you into physically needing to shake your head out of a daze, you'll be ready for "Clocks". Still, I give it three hands.
"Daylight" begins mysteriously reminiscent of the eastern feel which the darkest Yardbird has brought us a time or two. Another composition on the CD which may be asserted in lieu of medicating heavily, or taken in conjunction with.
"Green Eyes" rings easy. A song for any season. Picturesque of inspiring European love affairs worldwide.
"Warning Sign" is neither fantastic nor chart-topping. But, even at first listen, I'll stick a pen out on this one and say that though it's akin to three hundred other songs by as many artists, it'll become one of Coldplay's staples. They pull off their distinct sound in a most constrained understate. They're holding back, tottering with our knowledge that at any moment they can round that corner of sound and release with colors.
"A Whisper" has a rhythm which alters our concentration, gripping, tense. Then, once more-though no objections are there?-there's more than trace hintage of influence of David, Gilmour that is, in this instance from his 1984 solo effort, his second. It too, was horrendously misunderstood and most underrated, as I sense this album already may stand to be. Neither Gilmour's nor this work is intended for everyday ingesting. But in pinpoint adaptation to mood: Methodical, cathartic and neutralizing paroxysms of crave.
(The title cut) Once the slide-guitar kicks in and the beautifully Beatles' backvocals balmically enhance, the song, along with the first three and seventh, pretty much covers the cost of the CD. This song may well file into Rock and Roll's Hall, without too much resistance. Given time, let Coldplay break some ice.
"Amsterdam" wraps up this concept album in a low-key piano-vocal semblance of work - until the 4 minute mark, then steady bass and drums rain in, caressing. And they fade. The piano-vocal reprise, and their bit have a last wink.
It's bound to be canned as depressant by surface ears. Of course sharper minds know that not every demographic gamble is a loser. Once a horde is secure and served, address their whims and fancy their cures along with the stance of inching away before they've seen the show. Tickets will sellout in the scalpers' line to the tour dates of a next album which has yet to be made.
Morgan Field