Album #130: Coldplay - A Rush of Blood To The Head

Coldplay

A Rush of Blood To The Head (2002)

MUSIC PRESS IN 2002 OR SO: "Hey wow everyone, here's the next Radiohead, set to TOTALLY BLOW MUSIC APART, they're this band called Coldplay and they're like HEAPS GONNA BE THE NEXT RADIOHEAD or at the very least, the next Starsailor or Keane or Train or Travis or......"

ME: "..........................righto....................I guess I'll check it out........

<minutes later>

ME: "BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA 'THE NEXT RADIOHEAD' BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"

Yep, it's true, I've never liked Coldplay. A more banal, uninspiring band there has never been; they have always seemed to me to be the biggest nanna stadium band in the world. It is a constant source of bemusement to me that they are as popular as they are. I can only assume that they are prescribed by psychologists as a natural form of Prozac, so little energy do they often convey.

Sure, every so often they somehow manage to get it right (hi there, Fix You) but considering they've managed to release, what, seven albums of Muzak, there's gotta be something about them, right? There must be something I'm not getting?

Let's find out with their second album, A Rush of Blood To The Head, which Wikipedia rushes to tell me received 'immense acclaim from contemporary critics' except for Pitchfork, which said it was, well, boring and middle of the road. 

The Album

Actually, I think I get it entirely now.

Modern popular rock music is devoid of personality, of difference, of edge. Foo Fighters, Kings of Leon, the Black Keys, Coldplay.....it lives comfortably in the world of safety, of the tried-and-true (though at least the Fooeys know how to fucking rock every so often). Bands like Coldplay offer people for whom music is little more than a nice thing to listen to a chance to feel like they are really knowledgeable, or on the cutting edge - 'listen to these guys, they used to be indie you know, I really like them, maybe you've heard of them?' 

The truth is, Coldplay is anthemic AOR for people who don't want to actually invest energy and thought into their music - simple, pleasant soundbites are all they want. That challenging stuff is for nerds and hipsters. And yeah, I'm aware that first line totally marks me as a music snob...yes, I am, but I say it here with all the objectivity I can muster. There's not much on A Rush Of Blood To The Head that is abject shite. There's not much (if anything) that's complex, emotionally draining, affecting, ballsy, energetic....it's all just so bland and inoffensive that it requires no actual thinking outside of OOH THAT IS NICE.

You want proof? Two of the three biggest, most successful singles on this album - In My Place, Clocks and The Scientist - manage to be good enough songs but totally, utterly inoffensive. Yeah, I get the hype about Clocks - that piano riff is heavily sampled for a reason, so good does it sound, and it hits all the right notes as an anthem track by creating an actual atmosphere through its soundscape - but to label it 'one of the finest songs of the decade' does nobody any favours, and suggests that the person hasn't listened to much music. I also want to defend The Scientist, because it is, again, actually quite a good song. A beautiful, evocative piano ballad with a tender vocal from Martin, it also uses electric guitar in a clever, tasteful way, adding extra texture at the song's close. In My Place though is bogstandard, boring adult contemporary. While it starts with some rather booming drums, any energy in the song is quickly pissed away when the boring, meandering guitars and vocals enter. 

Yet the album's least successful (by far) single, God Put A Smile Upon Your Face, actually possesses some fucking personality. The acoustic chords are darkly melodic (there's none of that 'beautiful anthem' feeling here, other than in the chorus where it's obvious the band just can't help themselves), guitarist Jonny Buckland thinks he's The Edge with all his jangly noodling, and there's a cool bassline. It manages to at least convey something interesting. All this suggested to me was that people like Coldplay when they're not interesting AT ALL.

This was further confirmed by a couple of quite decent album tracks. Daylight is the only song on the entire album that could possibly lead anyone to conclude that the band were 'the next Radiohead', using a bassline that does remind one of Colin Greenwood's work (of playing a bassline that seems to float above everything else in the mix) and featuring a string section that plays a discordant, jarring chord progression. Politik was also okay as an opener, starting with some decent verve....but then that was, just like in In My Place, completely lost; while Amsterdam, with its combination of piano and booming organ chords is like a precursor to Fix You, only with none of the latter's emotion, power and shifting dynamics. Beyond that are a series of ballads and soft rock tunes that do nothing to excite or engage.

I also feel the need to point out something that emerged during my listening. While reading some of the Wiki entries, I noticed that whoever had written them was either a complete music illiterate or in the Coldplay entourage somewhere (NB. these are not mutually exclusive events). Comments describing the composition of songs were overblown to the point of parody (maybe they were actually parodies). Observe some of these choice comments made on the page for God Put A Smile Upon Your Face:

"The song starts with a hushed acoustic ballad...(then) builds into a roar of electric guitar and soaring with vocals...(it) also includes an uptempo metronomic drumming rhythm."

Righto, Captain Fuckwit, let's clear some things up shall we?

a) I'll pay the 'hushed acoustic ballad', though that does nothing to describe the fact that the chords actually create a sense of darkness, about the only time on the album everything isn't saccharine bullshit

b) A ROAR OF ELECTRIC GUITAR. A ROAR. A FUCKING ROAR. Have you ever heard of Iron Maiden? Judas Priest? Megadeth? Deep Purple? Manowar? Dream Theater? Slayer? Pantera? Black Sabbath? THEY HAVE GUITARS THAT ROAR, FUCKSTAIN. If you genuinely, GENUINELY, think that Coldplay's electric guitars 'roar' then might I suggest you not listen to anything harder, like Yanni or John Denver, because FUCK ME YOUR EARS MIGHT ACTUALLY EXPLODE

c) I doubt I'd call what Martin does here 'soaring', it's more like 'singing normally, oh maybe slightly louder but that's most likely achieved through the mastering of the album'

d) Writing the phrase 'uptempo metronomic drumming rhythm' shows you to be so completely devoid of any musical understanding that Coldplay probably is the perfect band for you. Even the biggest Pitchfork wankers wouldn't use a phrase like that. Fuck, I'm a drummer, and not once have I ever turned to my bandmates and said, "shit guys, what this song needs is an uptempo metronomic drumming rhythm". All you have done is taken a thesaurus so that you can make the phrase, "simplistic boring risk-free timekeeping that an untrained monkey could do", sound like the musician is some sort of percussion genius. YOU ARE A FUCKWIT OF THE HIGHEST ORDER, or to put it in terms you might understand, "uneducated opinionated observer of percussive compositional elements".

The Verdict

If this album were a person, it'd be described by its friends as 'nice but boring', 'a real wallflower' and 'afraid to take risks in case people don't like them anymore'. A Rush Of Blood To The Head might not be the most painful album I've heard (hell, it's far from it, if I'm honest) but for OMGWTFBBQEMOTIONPOWER music it sure as shit fucking struggles to evoke any feelings whatsoever...even hatred seems like too much effort for this.

Still, good luck to them. They've sold zillions of albums and are a massive musical deal, and that can't be denied. It also can't be denied that they do what they do well - most of those bands I mentioned at the start (except for Radiohead who manage to be extremely popular AS WELL AS genre-bending and artistically adventurous) amounted to little more than piano-based bland blips on the landscape, while the Coldplay juggernaut marched on - so there's clearly some quality there.

For mine though, despite occasionally showing its wares, A Rush Of Blood To The Head is like a stripper who refuses to remove her thick raincoat, or her pants, or her jacket, or her blouse....potential is there but it's all one big tease.

My rating: 6.0/10

Standout Tracks

The Scientist

God Put A Smile Upon Your Face

Daylight