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Album Review
by SaschaS
27-8-2002
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| Coldplay's 'A Rush Of Blood To The ...' |
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Coldplay: 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head'
(Parlophone)
Coldplay’s second disc is bound to delight millions more
“It sounds like Coldplay. You'll recognise it as being us, but it’s more energetic and upbeat, more mature, more confident. We’ve grown as people and musicians and we’re quite confident we’ve delivered a record that will meet all our fans’ expectations. I think we’ve come up with a very good follow-up,” is singer Chris Martin’s opinion on the band’s sophomore disc, ‘A Rush Of Blood To The Head’.
And bro/sis, you better believe it. This is huge, a new standard for the future, a disc that will glue your asinine behind to a seat and not let go until it is tattooed inside your cranium. But, immediacy should not be expected here but compulsive sessions of re-listening because this is a treasure normally designated as a ‘grower’. Not even the current single, ‘In My Place’, reaches to the pop splendour of ‘Yellow’ or ‘Trouble’… Despite debut album ‘Parachutes’ selling five million copies globally, Martin is not letting in anyone easy.
These are serious songs to discover and uncover time and again: there are serene tunes and ‘Green Eyes’ is a fine example but ‘The Scientist’ surpasses its ballad-ness by compelling you with its beautiful simplicity driven by piano and voice. Coldplay’s emo-rock is for grown-ups and as sensitive as twenty-something’s can get about emotional issues… There are opposing moments, like the striking opener, ‘Politik’ or ‘God Put A Smile Upon Your Face’ but this is a measured ‘pop-rock’, far from riffage.
In many a review U2 and/or Radiohead have been mentioned but comparisons are invalid on both counts: there is no large and charismatic personality like Bono’s here and Radiohead contain some epic proportion in their music Coldplay refuse for the sake of intimacy, that is equally ethereal. It appears that the main inspiration for this album were the mid-1980s, people like The Cure and The Smiths; ‘Daylight’ bears more than passing resemblance to Echo & The Bunnymen’s hit ‘The Cutter’ from 1983, and it’s been well-documented that Martin and the Bunnymen singer, Mac (Ian McCulloch), have formed a mutual admiration society… (Martin has also established a ‘bond’ with Oasis but that’s an association everyone should refrain from!)
Certain spirit of Roger Waters-era Pink Floyd surfaces on ‘A Whisper’, one of the parade of grand songs. The only (and slight) disappointments are lyrics in one instance and the album’s title: ‘Politik’ rightly goes “Give me real don’t give me fake” only to demand soon afterward, “Give me love over this”. Well, granted the state of the world, love might appear like the last refuge but the ideological triumvirate of peace, love and understanding has never worked/overcome anything: poverty, religious wars or economic slavery. For someone who swotted over Ancient World Studies, Martin should be more aware of such psychedelic/hippy generalisation.
The album’s title reads like a double-entendre and not a very smart one, which wasn’t the intention, methinks… But, it makes album appear like it is concerned with carnality rather than the valiancy of loving and inquisition of dump-ola…
8/10
SaschaS
27-8-2002
Coldplay’s album ‘A Rush Of Blood To The Head’ is released 26 August 2002 on Parlophone
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