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Coldplay Recent Media Articles (Updated 5/30, 11:00am ET)


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Keep 'em coming:

another review this time new zealand.

 

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=6&ObjectID=10328928

 

"The temptation with this one is to be really pernickety. Pull it apart line by line. Scoff loudly at those who think it will make Coldplay the next U2. Make cruel jokes at the expense of Chris Martin and his missus - she's famous you know - who undoubtedly figures in the lyrics somewhere.

 

Try to dash the hopes of those record company shareholders whose dividends are riding on this selling a couple of million by next week, not to mention those in the butane industry hoping a new batch of Coldplay ballads will cause an upturn in global ciggy-lighter fuel consumption. That sort of thing."

 

 

 

Right there, that's exactly what some of these reviewers, RS in particular, are trying to do. They're those snobby uptight music 'critics' that scoff at the idea of a band like Coldplay becoming the next U2, so they find any way to try and take them down a notch, wether deserved or not.

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Quote from the Chicago Tribune (on Til Kingdom Come)...

"Sonically it doesn't quite fit on "X&Y." But at its core, it's the type of song Coldplay does best. In their quest to conquer the world, Martin and company shouldn't forget that their best music isn't always necessarily their biggest."

 

Spot on I'd say. :D

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yikes, a 4.9 from pitchfork?

yes, i know it's "pitchfork," but such a low rating? it just makes me think what did coldplay previously do to offend this critic, because the content on the album is above par.

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They judge mostly on whether it's indie or cool enough. Neither of those adjectives can really be used to describe Coldplay. Hence hatred and general vitriole.

 

In today's Toronto Star, Section C5 (when I read where it was, I thought it was A5, and I was like WHOA, they've moved up in the world, but nope...I just hadn't had my coffee at the time, heh):

 

Coldplay feels the heat

While it doesn't achieve leap of predecessor, it's easy to like

 

BEN RAYNER

 

Getting crowned "the biggest band on the planet" is the stuff of which rock 'n' roll dreams are made, but one still can't help but feel a twinge of compassion for the amiable lads in Coldplay.

 

The British quartet's third album, X&Y, drops today, and the soaring expectations placed upon it seem nearly impossible to meet.

 

An entire record label's financial future hangs in the balance, while the members of Coldplay are rumoured to have tied themselves in knots during the record's 18-month gestation period trying to come up with the Ultimate Artistic Statement, their very own OK Computer or Joshua Tree. If it sells anything less than 12 million copies and isn't universally acclaimed as the greatest album of all time, it's likely doomed (most irrationally) to be dubbed a "disappointment."

 

In town for a three-day blitz of interviews, radio and MuchMusic appearances and a hot-ticket club gig at Kool Haus last month, frontman Chris Martin and guitarist Jonny Buckland were nonetheless putting a commendably brave face on their predicament.

 

"We're in the eye of the hurricane, really," says Martin, 28, a thoughtful character who shares a loopy sense of humour with his old schoolmate and guitar player. "Although the brain can visualize space and everything, it's impossible to see anything other than your own perspective. So while we're aware there's all this stuff going on around our album, we don't see it."

 

"We just sit in this room and people come in and we chat," says Buckland.

 

X&Y seems almost predestined to be one of the year's biggest albums, but Coldplay and its record company, EMI — which recently pinned a 5 per cent drop in annual revenues squarely on the band's failure to meet its deadlines — have been taking no chances with its fate.

 

No media outlet, it seems, has been left untouched in a pre-release promo assault that included a warm-up tour of smallish venues that sold out within minutes in each city, while the album itself was kept under strict lock and key until just last week to avoid Internet piracy.

 

To acquire advance interviews, reporters had to sign agreements pledging that stories such as this one would run within a week of X&Y's release, thus guaranteeing separate press hits for the club tour and the album's in-store date.

 

"We only got a sense of that once we'd finished it, or we only let ourselves get a sense of it once we were finished," says Martin, also adjusting to paparazzi-besieged life as a celebrity husband and father since marrying actress Gwyneth Paltrow in 2003.

 

"It's fine, though. No matter how much pressure comes from outside, it's never as much pressure as trying to have to impress your drummer. It doesn't matter if 10 million other people like it, if Will (Champion), our drummer, doesn't like it, it's not gonna happen. And it'll piss you right off.

 

"He's also the physically strongest, so it's not worth arguing with him. He could mash you to a pulp."

 

Whether or not external influences had anything to do with it, X&Y took a maddeningly long time to gel. A plan to "record it very quickly and then have a bit of a holiday," as Buckland laughingly puts it, went out the window about six months in when Coldplay scrapped a pile of early songs that had had the soul Pro-Tooled out of them and "just sounded like any other band."

 

Regrouping in its rehearsal space, the band set about writing "in a live environment, rather than a studio environment," says Martin, and gradually bashed out the 13 stadium-sized emo-rockers and female-melting ballads ("We're trying to resurrect the power ballad," he quips) that eventually came together this winter as X&Y.

 

"I never remember getting my homework in on time, but I always thought it was better to hand it in good and a bit late than sh-- and on time," offers Martin.

 

"It was really very exciting to make, but the flipside to `exciting' — the X to its Y — was that it was very hard at times, or seemingly disastrous because anything that wasn't a peak was a trough. For about six months, we were sort of going along on an even keel and it wasn't very interesting for us, so once we started doing something exciting, everything else was terrible."

 

"The highs got higher, the lows got much lower," adds Buckland. "Not until you really like a lot of it do you know the kind of shape it will take, and not until you've got a lot of it do you know what else you need."

 

X&Y doesn't achieve the kind of giant leap Coldplay made between its modest 2000 debut, Parachutes, and 2002's blustery A Rush of Blood to the Head, eschewing experimentation for a confident refinement of its predecessor's self-consciously epic songwriting and an emphasis on even bigger sonics. It's a very easy record to like, however, thanks to Martin's gift for poignant, gracefully propulsive melodies and just-clever-enough lyrics that take on an elevated air of import when sung back at the stage by an arena full of fans.

 

There's a Radiohead-ish spaciness to the uncharacteristically bitter "Twisted Logic," a squall of My Bloody Valentine guitars on "Low," a riff from Kraftwerk's "Computer Love" incorporated into "Talk." The lovely hidden track, "Til Kingdom Come," was originally written for Johnny Cash, but could just as easily fit among the acoustic tracks on Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy. Most of the record, however, bears out the frequent assertion that Coldplay is the band most likely to unseat U2 as the planet's most widely adored rock stars.

 

Martin's malleable voice is a dead ringer for Bono's on such tracks as the cathartic, death-obsessed weepie "Swallowed in the Sea," while the rest of the band — particularly Buckland, whose keening guitar lines on "Square One" might as well have been played by the Edge — appears to have schooled itself in the airy expanses of The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree, before recording.

 

The admitted fans in Coldplay, naturally, are chuffed to be mentioned in the same breath as U2, let alone to be nipping at Bono's haughty heels. They are nonetheless quick to express gratitude for being able to live the dream lives they've suddenly found themselves living.

 

"This is kind of crazy," says Martin. "We flip between having a great amount of confidence and also a woeful self-image. We saw a picture of us today and we were, like, `How the f--- does anybody believe in us? We look like a bunch of twats.' But we have great artwork, and we can always hide behind that. I think we're closer to being the new Pink Floyd because U2 has a more charismatic frontman with much better hair.

 

"Jonny and I were just talking about this today. Why, out of all the people in history, are we not Greek farmers in the year 202? Why are we me and him? We just are. We have to be grateful for it and make as much of an effort as possible to validate it."

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Cool article thing. Love the quote about Nazi Germany by Chris.

 

Bigger than superact U2?

 

By Joshua Klein

for RedEye

Published June 7, 2005

 

 

Tell someone they're going to be King of the World, and it's inevitable that they'll start to act the part. Tell someone they're going to be the biggest pop star on earth, and you pave the way for even more grandiose behavior.

 

When Coldplay hit the music world with "Parachutes," they were pegged the next Radiohead. But Radiohead bristled at being on top of the heap and took several creative left turns, so the pundits began to compare Coldplay to a more reliable superstar act: namely, U2.

 

Hey, why not think big?

 

The comparison was hardly unjustified, considering both bands feature shimmering guitar hooks, at turns bombastic and soaring anthems and an insufferable frontman who carries on like a gaze from his eyes could cure leprosy. The Bono-fronted U2 worked its way to the top and has always retained a sense of irony about its success. Coldplay, on the other hand, arrived eerily fully formed, as if groomed like heirs. Once lead singer Chris Martin landed a queen in Gwyneth Paltrow, his behavior as a rock 'n' roll royal only increased.

 

Coldplay was predestined to become the Next Big Thing because, unlike the more risk-taking U2 or Radiohead, Coldplay accepted its coronation. A spate of recent interviews with Martin have found him halfheartedly frowning and furrowing his brow at the prospect of fame while in the next breath he not only embraces it but practically proclaims his band's top place in the pop world.

 

If Martin trusted the tides of taste to flow his way, he would just keep mum and let fate play out. But Coldplay's so ambitious, so intent on domination, that nothing can be left to chance, and Martin's obviously feeling the rush of power possessed by one whose future has all but been predetermined to be preternaturally successful. Still under the age of 30 and wielding enough influence to affect the stock of a major music label (EMI took a Wall Street tumble when Coldplay's "X&Y" was delayed last year), Martin's more than ready for the big time. But is the world ready for his head to get even bigger?

 

"Would it be really possible to start Nazi Germany if you'd just been listening to Bob Marley's 'Exodus' back to back for the past three weeks and getting stoned?" he asked in a widely circulated interview last week.

 

"Would the idea of the Holocaust seem so appealing?"

 

You want another Bono?

 

Well, it looks like we're going to get one.

 

--Joshua Klein is a RedEye special contributor.

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