william_miller

Coldplay - X&Y
Somewhere, Bono's cursing.

For 20 years now, U2 has been the only name in anthemic, soul-stirring rock. Until now. X&Y, Coldplay's third album, throws their hat into that ring and brings about something quaint, brilliant, dark, and that speaks plainly about both your last breakup and the Middle East in the same line. Coldplay has finally mastered the double-meaning; on songs like "What If", when Chris Martin says "let's take a breath/try to hold it aside", he could be talking of an argument or a war -- and you'd never know which. That is the execution of the album, and it works incredibly well. It bounces between grandiose, wide-open choruses, filled with reverb and echo and layered voices (or is it a choir singing underneath Martin in "Fix You"? I will never be able to tell) to suddenly, one piano, or just Johnny Buckland's Edge-meets-Radiohead guitar.

The album itself starts off floating in techno sounds, complete with a Will Champion drum beat that is perfectly played to not be Coldplay. And then the song, "Square One", explodes, and becomes a heart-filling rocker with a dancebeat. This'll likely garner them comparisons to U2's Achtung Baby!, but like so many albums this year, it's a misleading track. "What If" is a slow, melancholy song that seems to have been picked from Parachutes, while "White Shadows" plays around with techno guitar and synths again. Then there's the likely next single -- "Fix You", which can only be accurately described as an organ, an acoustic guitar, a classical piano, and the sound of a million lighters lifting off into the air.

My personal favorite? "Talk". A joyous rocker about a relationship where the silent treatment has come up (or maybe it's urging diplomacy) and how it's time to sit down and work it out. This is where Coldplay rise highest into a rock-n-roll anthem, as their chorus brings a ringing-bell guitar and the lines "so you don't know where you're going but you want to talk/but you feel like you're going where you been before", the song leaves you physically and emotionally exhausted. A sign of a truly great song.

There are problems -- sometimes Coldplay does fall into the ditch of self-indulgence, making some songs longer than they'd ever need to be -- but as the final strings fade off at the end of "Twisted Logic", you may not mind it at all.

3andthreefourths/4

Standout Tracks: "Square One", "Fix You", "Talk", "X&Y", "Speed of Sound", "The Hardest Part", "Twisted Logic"