Coldplay - X&Y (2005)

Tracklist:
1. Square One
2. What If
3. White Shadows
4. Fix You
5. Talk
6. X&Y
7. Speed of Sound
8. A Message
9. Low
10. The Hardest Part
11. Swallowed in the Sea
12. Twisted Logic
13. Til Kingdom Come (hidden)

Atmospheric Space Pop – 7,5/10

Coldplay decided that their sound needed a change. And that’s basically the first thing you’ll notice about X&Y. The fun part of Coldplay is that they change their sound every album. Parachutes had this somewhat raw and unpolished sound, A Rush of Blood to the Head featured an overpolished and commercial pop sound, and X&Y again sounds entirely different and considerably catchier. This album also features a few great hits, making it another very successful album by the lords of pop. Before this album came out, Coldplay were teasing us with phrases like ‘we are trying to make the best thing that anyone has ever heard’*. I must say I was quite a bit surprised to hear this coming from a band I always regarded as cheap, commercial and plain back then. I have to say this album did kind of change that image.

The immediate discovery you’ll make is the strong and dominant presence of synthesizers and string ensembles. The synth sound used is mostly an atmospheric spacey sound and makes you feel you’re in space, especially when it’s only Chris Martin and the synths you hear. There’s a slight reverb effect added to the guitars to add even more to the space theme. Apart from the mysterious space feel in the music, there’s also some great mysterious nature in the lyrics. They seem to deal moments of things that are uncertain and unreal. Some of these lyrics are quite high quality, such as “Talk” or “White Shadows”, but there’s also some quite cheesy and downright stupid tripe in “What If”. Overall, the lyrics fit the music. Also a more relative change is the increased amount of guitar melodies and guitar themes in the songs. Though they are more backed up by synths or string ensembles on the background, the foreground relies more on guitar than piano now.

Let me take you on a journey through the highlights and abominations of this album. The first track you’ll come across is “Square One”. An atmospheric synthesizer intro and some vocal lines later we have Will Champion giving one of his greatest drum rhythms ever. It doesn’t take that long for the full band to join in and the guitar is the main accompanying instrument. There’s an echo attached to Martin’s voice as well. The song is further carried on by the backing synths and the accompanying guitars. Overall this is a great opener. “What If” tries to build on to this atmosphere that is created, but just fails at the beginning. They not only began with pianos, the first lyrical phrase is ‘What if there was no life?’. Can you come up with anything cheesier? The song evolves in a gentle pop song with a nice guitar melody towering high above the other instruments and soon enough we’ll be back into the great synth-guitar accompaniment duo. Absolute highlight is found in “White Shadows”. The great accompaniment remains here and the verses feature solid drums by Champion and then it goes back to the main theme with its great towering guitar melody by Jonny Buckland. The second verse features at least three guitar tracks, which adds a lot to the song. As the beautiful chorus finally arrives we have Martin giving a great falsetto voice with an epic synth-guitar duo. The great line continues with the two big hits “Fix You” and “Talk”, which are both very catchy and are respectively a ballad and a rocker. I would never have thought Coldplay would make a rock song, but with “Talk” they made a good rock song, albeit they bought the main guitar melody from Kraftwerk.

This is where the album weakens a little. With the title track “X&Y” we have a clear case of string ensemble overload. While the song itself is not that bad, it is slightly spoiled by the very dominant string ensemble. “Speed of Sound” is very similar to big hit “Clocks”, which just sounds lame and uninspired. Although it is a different song and, surprise surprise, another hit single, we have a similar theme and similar melodies. “A Message” begins with the classic Coldplay guitar intro we often hear on the first two albums, but later somewhat explodes into a bombastic synth part that is supposed to be the chorus, yet lacks one thing: aren’t choruses supposed to be catchy? Though I must admit I like the verses of this song, I really despise the choruses. “Low” has to be the lowest quality on this album. The verses really sound like a cheap copy of “White Shadows” and the chorus is just an enormous letdown and actually doesn’t do anything. It leads nowhere and the enormously dominant synthesizers are not funny at all here, combined with Buckland merely slamming the appropriate chord as many times as he can in the chorus.

After this dive we come back to the surface and meet more quality songs. “The Hardest Part” and “Swallowed by the Sea” both have a very catchy and a somewhat sing-along theme, and it really surprised me that the latter was not released as a single and “What If” was. In contrast to the previous few songs, the good synth-guitar accompaniment balance has been restored here and makes these songs memorable. “Twisted Logic” somewhat takes this new Coldplay sound we’ve been surprised with and adds it to a classic Coldplay song. In other words, it is your favorite epic closing song you find on earlier albums, but now converted for X&Y sound. The track is great and at the chorus all the good things of this album return: the high falsetto voice of Chris Martin, the great synthesizer-guitar accompaniment, the epic feeling and the powerful drumming of Will Champion. The hidden track “Til Kingdom Come” is a nice acoustic song that sounds like it was recorded by Chris Martin in his bedroom.

In short, X&Y is a very different Coldplay sound, mostly due to the powerful new sound of the synthesizers and the more present guitars. Although the album weakens a little in the middle the good songs are great and hint subtly at the following studio release Viva la Vida or Death and All his Friends. This album I recommend to every pop fan alive, since modern pop music rarely sounds like this. X&Y is a one-of-a-kind experience.

Strongest tracks: “White Shadows”, “Swallowed by the Sea” and “Twisted Logic”.
Weakest tracks: “Low”, “A Message” and “Speed of Sound”.

* = Source