The first thing that struck me about the new Coldplay album, X&Y, is how loaded it is with references-cum-homages to other, older bands. I mean, it’s apparent from the very first notes’ Also Sprach Zarathustra swipe (provided one counts Richard Strauss as a band). Then there’s the nod to the “something’s got a hold on me” part of the Velvet Underground’s “New Age” (on “What If”), the duly attributed melodic lift from Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love” (on “Talk”), a self-plagiarizing “Clocks” all-but-remake of the sort that would make Saul Zaentz smile knowingly to himself (the much-commented-upon “Speed of Sound”), and the Mother of All Borrowing Types, a Beatles swipe, specifically the circling guitar crunch of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” (on “Twisted Logic,” which even obliquely references that sonic motion in its title).
The next thing that struck me is that I actually appreciated all these little salutes. “Talk” in particular reminded me why “Computer Love” has always been my favorite Kraftwerk song. The band takes that timidly sweet keyboard line, translates it to guitar, and suspends it in the space of the arenas it will surely be rocking throughout the summer; near the end of the song they take the strangely sinister river of bass that’s always been present beneath the surface of that melody and push it through the low end until it’s a roiling seething sea.
It’s that combination of space-rock and arena-rock sonics that gave me my third impression of the album, which is that I like it. I don’t think it’s as immediately impressive as either of the band’s first two albums–particularly their sophomore effort A Rush of Blood to the Head, which was really admirable in the way it refused to rest on the laurels of the “Radiohead’s less weird kid brother” reputation garnered by the band’s debut. There were a lot of sounds and songs on Rush that you hadn’t heard from Coldplay before, if you can remember–they’d never done a song like “Clocks” or “Politik” in their vocabulary prior to that, you know. X&Y is more a game of refinement and bigger-better-ism than one of staking out new sounds. (The exception is the insistent acoustic guitar and suddenly stepped-up vocal deliver of the hidden track, “Kingdom Come.”) Which is fine, really, if you’re refining and expanding upon such an impressive foundation. Personally I think the ultra-produced production actually works quite well, incidentally, and I say that as someone who complains long and loud about overproduction in many other cases.
The only thing that bothers is an increasingly apparent lack of lyrical sophistication. “Talk,” for example, is nearly undone by the repeated injunction “Let’s talk, let’s talk” at the song’s conclusion. Quite frankly, it’s like something you’d expect from one of Phil Collins & Genesis’s more earnest mid-’80s efforts. And there’s oodles and oodles of “when you think you’re sinking, I’ll be your life jacket” sentiment draped here there and everywhere. At times I believe that Coldplay, as much as everyone likes them now, will be regarded in much the same way in 10 or 20 years as Genesis and the like is now. Some future Bret Easton Ellis will have some future American Psycho pen a chapter singing the band’s praises in some future satire of aughtie excess and emptiness. In no small part this is due to lead singer Chris Martin’s public persona as a starlet-marrying, stupid-baby-naming, cause-embracing poor man’s Bono. I will also admit that I managed to listen to the whole album at least once without a single song registering as more than background music (to be fair, I was pretty busy at the time). That said, I’m not convinced any of these criticisms are truly valid–at the least, a Phil-esque fate is certainly not unavoidable. A dip into a more self-effacing Achtung Baby/Zooropa/Pop mode might help the band’s fortunes immeasurably, though I’m sure as the second-biggest band in the world they’re probably pretty happy with where they are.
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Much more of an immediate knockout punch, and I mean a teeth-flying-out-your-mouth, serious-concussion, career-ending knockout, is Get Behind Me Satan by the White Stripes. Everything that all the critics said about Elephant, Satan‘s predecessor? They were right. They were just one album too early. Good God, this is sophisticated, weird, supremely confident music making.
For starters, there’s almost no guitar. At all. The most notable exception is the album’s lead track and lead single, “Blue Orchid,” which I’ve talked about before. It’s a sinister ass-shaker with a full-sounding hook that combines the best qualities of a New Wave synth riff and a full-on Tony Iommi onslaught. But perhaps the most fitting point of reference is Led Zeppelin: Just as Zep started off their largely acoustic album III with “Immigrant Song,” the single most aggressive metal track in their catalog, so too do the White Stripes use the borderline-industrial “Blue Orchid” to launch an LP full of murky piano and percussion exercises. It’s pretty damn brilliant is what it is, and the moment that “Blue Orchid”‘s relentless riffery (punctuated by one of the all-time great “woo woo!”s in rock history) gives way to the mysterious marimba (!) of “The Nurse,” you know you’re in for something special.
Satan is indeed a special record, a ghostly transmission from the submerged Appalachia of Deliverance, inspiring thoughts of Zeppelin III, Physical Graffiti, side three of Exile on Main Street. It sounds like it was recorded in hermetically sealed conditions by a band with absolutely no interest in listening to or following what any of its contemporaries in any medium were up to. Whatever production tricks were employed, it gives the album a vastly more unified, “this is this album” feel than either of the Stripes’ previous post-stardom efforts. There’s a pair of funk-soul rockers (“My Doorbell” and “The Denial Twist”) that will get your head nodding as surely as a either a new Neptunes single or an old Metallica track. The bluegrass song “Little Ghost,” besides being really funny, is also entirely sincere–I could easily imagine my wife’s West Virginian ancestors playing it on the porch a few generations ago. “Forever for Her (Means Nothing for Me)” and “White Moon” are a couple of slow, methodical, haunting ballads that get their rough-hewn, seemingly unfinished hooks in and simply won’t let go until their three or four minutes are up. “Instinct Blues” actually takes the hoary old blues cliches that so bothered me in Elephant‘s “Ball and Biscuit” and makes a real feedbacky corker of ’em. Jack and Meg White’s strange relationship is mentioned more directly than ever before on at least two songs (the Meg-sung interlude “Passive Manipulation” and “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet),” which simply adds to the strange, hypnotic “where are these cats at, anyway?” vibe. “Take, Take, Take,” a perfectly good strutter of a tune, suddenly slams on the brakes, hits the piano and the timpani, and demands to be listened to. “As Ugly as I Seem” is a folk song worthy of Nick Drake–or of Jimmy Page & Robert Plant’s efforts in that direction. Speaking of Zeppelin (it’s impossible not to with this record, and I assure you that that’s a VERY high compliment coming from this writer), “Red Rain” surgically removes the guitar squalls and solos of “In My Time of Dying,” places them in suspended animation, and stretches them across four minutes of fury–right on top of the gentle “As Ugly,” might I add, and right before the timeless, flawless, lyrically fascinating country piano ballad “I’m Lonely (But I Ain’t That Lonely Yet),” which closes the album and God, does it also make you wish record companies released songs like these as singles.
Jesus–to think I almost didn’t buy this record!
This is where Jack and Meg White earn the place in music that critics have been so eager to award them. Album of the year so far, easily.