And In The End...

Just look at that image. Doesn't it look so powerful and revolutionary? Fear not, mes amies, the revolution is in full effect. This borrowing of a portion of the famous painting Liberty Leading the People leaves a bold impression. It's on. But what does the music sound like? And...why the French connection, "Viva la Vida" is Spanish.

So here come Coldplay once again, bursting out of the gates with a highly anticipated follow up to their last highly anticipated follow up. I've been devoting a lot of my thought process to them as of late in due to their inevitable summer saturation being highly topical. You see, I've always had quite the opinion of Coldplay. They are the kings of the pretenders: bands that aspire to be much more, but crumble under microscopic analysis of the sum of their parts.

To think this group's opening track of their first record was titled "Don't Panic", after the famous line of Douglas Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. While I did enjoy this initial tune and a few that followed it, I would say the collective body of Coldplay's work would best be exemplified by Adam's description of earth: "Mostly Harmless". By Coldplay's own admission, they take the best bits of other, more progressive and respected artists and graft the catchy, easily digestible bits onto one another in a veritable Frankenstein of arena worthy soft rock delivered with serviceable songwriting. The edgy, more interesting bits are abandoned, left twitching on the cutting room floor.

For their most recent release Chris Martin and the boys have enlisted some pretty heavy hitters, by way of Brian Eno, Markus Dravs and Jon Hopkins. They all do their best to polish the collective turd of a band known best for repeating themselves and taking few, calculated risks. What we are left with is an interesting middle ground that still delivers Coldplay's vision of a PG Radiohead, but often channels late 80's and early 90's era U2 in more regularity. This is their "throw it all out and start again" album, their Kid A or Achtung Baby. What it really sounds like is a safe, diluted attempt at keeping the formula the same while dressing things up in new clothes to keep the faithful still interested.

The big buzz of Latin influences and 90 degree changes in direction don't ever come, other than a couple bits of exotic percussion on "Gone!", a guaranteed sappy if lyrically trite future anthem for dad rock fans everywhere. Their aspirations of one day pleasing the arty and underground music fans that abandoned them long ago take over for numbers like "Chinese Sleep Chant", with it's My Bloody Valentine aping "shoegaze lite" tones, and album opener "Life in Technicolor", in which Jon Hopkins creates a nice electro-ambient Ulrich Schnauss-esque atmosphere for the band to play after.

The Achtung Baby connection can be heard on "Death And All His Friends" and "Lovers in Japan", their sweeping Edge mimicking guitars diving and frolicking while Martin tries with great urgency to articulate the gravity of it all with recurring themes of war, politics and death. Elsewhere Marcus Dravs ads his share of assistance in dressing bits of the title track and "Reign of Love" up in Arcade Fire production with grand strings and lots of reverb.

All of this ads up to a marked improvement over previous terrain Coldplay have tread. I am quite sure the unwashed masses will clamour on about how this is a breakthrough, but for me--it's just pretty OK. As a fan of Eno and others, there are some nice sounds and atmospheres here. But if anything, even when the band does a good job of scoring up a nice ballad or rock number, things fall flat when splattered with Martin's amateur and snore inducing lyricism. He still hasn't got much or say, or an interesting way of saying it. The political and religious messages all contradict or confuse as if penned by a man not wanting to offend anyone. He may still dream of a seat at the table with Bono, Yorke, Hutchense, Stipe et all, but he's still nowhere close.

Martin sings "And in the end/We lie awake/And dream of making our escape"on the set closer "The Escapist". One might surmise this as being the collective sentiments of all of Coldplay, in the grand conclusion of creating this record, hoping of attaining a level of artistic appreciation and identity that matches their record sales. The rest then, is up to us. 5/10.