Today we are looking at the album that killed my interest in Coldplay; Ghost Stories. From about 2008 to 2011 or so Coldplay were one of my favorite bands, I absolutely adored Viva La Vida and the Prospekts March EP and I at least enjoyed the singles from Mylo Xyloto even if I never got into the full album. Then Coldplay released A Sky Full of Stars as the lead single from their album Ghost Stories and I pretty much lost all interest in this band until I rediscovered Viva La Vida in 2015 and heard some of A Head Full of Dreams.
Now let’s be clear, I went into this album more biased than usual because of the disdain I had for A Sky Full of Stars. I could not stand the boring instrumental and excruciatingly repetitive lyrics; and yeah those criticisms kind of apply to the album as a whole. I don’t dislike dreamy ambient sounding music as a whole, in fact one of my favorite albums this year, Vitamins and Flowers by Trophii is a card carrying Dream Pop album. The difference is that Coldplay are at their best when they mix ambient elements with more traditional rock elements and always benefit from having interesting soundscapes.
The only track with any real energy Sky Full of Stars, with the only other thing keeping me awake being random drum machines. I get that Coldplay leaned on similarly dreary sounds for some of their hits like Yellow, Fix You and The Scientist but those songs still had some sort of rock edge or changes throughout the song. Yellow has gorgeous delay filled guitar passages, Fix You turns into a rock track with group vocals and The Scientist eventually turns into a rock song as well. On top of instrumental shifts that keep these tracks interesting, the lyrics are much deeper and more interesting than anything on Ghost Stories.
Overall this feels like an album where Coldplay weren’t sure what direction to go in, adding in 2010’s pop elements like the heavy use of drum machines and the dreary introspection of their earlier work. The issue is that the album isn’t as good at being dreary and introspective as Parachutes or X&Y and it is nowhere near as good at being a pop album as A Head Full of Dreams. If I were to rank all of Coldplay’s album this would by far be the worst, at least in my opinion.
An Album a Day is posted 5 days a week, Monday-Friday
After their latest hit came via collaboration with the reigning kings of pop The Chainsmokers, Coldplay have ventured further back towards their rock roots. Their new single Aliens (stylized A L I E N S) is a mature and more modern take on Coldplay’s earliest melancholy alternative rock sound. The sound of this track is absolutely beautiful, full of sweeping soundscapes of synths and ambient guitars that are anchored by piano, bass and drums.
The songs itself tells the story of aliens escaping a monstrous force trying to destroy them on their own planet and desperately finding a new place to live. Chris Martin takes a page straight out of Gene Roddenberry's book by using Sci-Fi motifs to talk about a somewhat touchy issue that people would have a strong reaction to, in this case refugees. Despite various article I’ve read about this song trying to make it specifically about Syrian refugees (imbuing this song with the article writer's political leaning) this track’s purpose is to promote and raise money for the Migrant Offshore Aid Station Foundation.
The MOAS Foundation is a charity organization that conducts search and rescue missions along what they call the deadliest migration routes in the world. With that said, I’m sure Coldplay intended this song as a more general statement on refugees and migrants in need as that fits the mold of their humanistic political stances that generally call for love and understanding of each other. Regardless of political stances on refugees and migrants, MOAS is a good cause and this song is fantastic even at face value.
The song itself features swirling synths and piano that fill out most of the mix, along with Martin’s reverb drenched vocals echoing across the soundscape. A sparse drumbeat, bassline and various guitar licks go the forefront in this spacey (no pun intended) alt rock track. I have always been a huge fan of Chris Martin's natural baritone voice so I couldn't be happier to see him using more of his low register in their newer music.
This song reminds me of a few other artists, containing elements that invoke Muse and even Gorillaz at times. It also strikes me that the sound of this song is the perfect blending of Coldplay's rockier sound with their poppier sound, striking a balance that Maroon 5 has been desperately searching for this entire decade.
Rather you want to delve deep into the metaphorical meaning of the lyrics or just take it as a trippy song about aliens, this music is just gorgeous. Hopefully this sound will be found throughout Coldplay's future releases. Their new EP Kaleidoscope drops next month. All the money made from this song will go to the MOAS Foundation, if you'd like to find out more about them click here. Single on Google Play Single on ITunes
An Album a Day is posted 5 days a week, Monday-Friday
Today we are covering one of my favorite albums of all time, Viva La Vida or Death And All of His Friends by Coldplay. Now, Coldplay are not generally a band I get all that excited about. Even back when this was my favorite album I understood that I didn’t really care for most of Coldplay’s other stuff. Not to say that they are bad or uncreative, their earlier style just wasn’t my cup of tea. But Viva La Vida is exactly the type of alternative rock that I absolutely adore these days. I enjoyed this album when it first came out in 2008, in fact I enjoyed the lead single so much that I made this my first album purchase ever. I bought this album from Whole Foods in Baton Rouge, Louisiana when I was 11 years old and made my brother put it his CD player while we sat in bumper to bumper traffic in the rain. This album was the second CD that I discovered sounded really good being endlessly looped through my boom box, the other being America’s Greatest Hits album. I’m not sure what about the track Viva La Vida first grabbed my attention; I think it was either the fact that he was clearly telling a story about a Napoleon type character in a pop song or simply the viva la revolution! Feel of the whole thing.
While I’d describe a lot of the elements on this album as vaguely world music sounding, there was something definitively French Revolution about the sound of the title track. From the beginning to end every song on this album is fantastic, with the mix of strings, world music, piano rock and Johnny Buckland doing his best The Edge impersonation meshing perfectly together.
This album mixes arena rocking and ambient music together into a fairly unique and awesome combination. The best tracks on this album are the two title tracks, along with Yes and Violet Hill, while the only real low point for me is Strawberry Swing sitting between Violet Hill and Death and All Of His Friends.
As previously mentioned, Viva La Vida is an anthemic rock track that oozes with the French Revolution vibe the band was evoking with this album. The song tells the tale of a dethroned king who now lives in poverty and isolation, seemingly being sung from the perspective of a Napoleon like character, post exile. This was certainly the most radio ready song on the album but it’s style is very weird for top 40 success as it is one of the most definitively rock songs Coldplay have ever had get popular.
My personal favorite track on the album, Yes, features Chris Martin singing in his lower baritone register to add variety to the album. As a baritone myself I always loved this song because it was one of the few Coldplay songs I could sing easily. Along with Martin’s seductive low vocals this track features some of the coolest violin parts on the record. Apparently this track was inspired heavily by The Velvet Underground, which are supposed to be the originators of the alternative rock sound. Along with this influence, band members have commented that the hidden track Chinese Sleep Chant at the end of this song is meant to be a parody of shoegaze and of My Bloody Valentine specifically.
Next we have Violet Hill, a track that is vaguely political but in the kind of way where you can pretty much insert any political opinion into the song. I actually really like these kinds of songs, because I really don’t care to hear political ranting in music, with exceptions made for Rage Against The Machine and anti-Vietnam songs because of the quality of music. This track works amazing well at making me feel the cold winter that Martin sings about, the synths and piano stabs convey this feeling very well. The lyrics are kind of a mash of jumbled words that sort of tell a story, but the delivery of the song makes up for the sometimes disjointed storytelling.
Lastly we have the other title track and album closer Death and All of His Friends. This track could easily be described as Violet Hill part 2, with the same cold feeling and disjointed storytelling over music that pulls the whole thing together. The album actually closes with a hidden track inside of Death and All of His Friends called The Escapist, which seems to be the existentialist crises of Chris Martin leaking out.
The track features the repeated line “And, In the end we lie awake, and we dream of making our escape” over the music from the album opener Life In Technicolor. This makes the album easy to listen to on repeat because of it's circular nature. I always took the lines to be a poetic description of being dead; the lines are also likely a reference to The End by The Beatles which has Paul McCartney singing “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”.
As I said at the beginning of this review, this is one of my favorite albums of all time, turning this review more into a sales pitch to go listen to it. While I’m biased in favor of this album because of the nostalgia for me, I legitimately believe this album is just as good as I’ve said it. One of the strongest points of this album for me is it enough of an arena rock album to be a pump up daytime listen and ambient enough to be listened to at night. I can’t even count how many times I fell asleep to this album as a kid or even as an adult. I’ve enjoyed this album for 9 years now and I fully expect to be enjoying it for many more to come; do yourself a favor and give it a listen.
