i dont know if this has been posted before but here's a review i found

 

 

Chill Factor

 

Coldplay’s Chris Martin is one repressed, neurotic pop star. But his angst pays off on X&Y.

By Rob Tannenbaum

 

The juiciest sighting last month at the alternative-rock festival Coachella came Sunday at 7 A.M., only a few hours after Coldplay’s headlining set, when Chris Martin walked into the restaurant of his hotel with baby Apple—no nanny or entourage in sight. Letting wife Gwyneth Paltrow sleep in, even though his band sold 10 million copies of their last record, confirmed Martin’s reputation for decency: With his last-unironic-man-standing lyrics and firm support for global fair trade, he’s like Bono without the messiah complex.

 

The problem is, a messiah complex is what makes Bono interesting. Intelligent, measured, tidy, lovely, identifiably European, and nearly sexless, Coldplay embodies an ideal of Enlightenment dignity. The band’s name gets it backward: Play Cold is more like it. Your level of interest in their music probably correlates with your willingness to be bored. But like yoga or Star Wars, which are also boring, Coldplay’s enormous success demands consideration, and on X&Y, their long, long, really long-delayed third album, Martin rewards that curiosity by finally coming into focus.

 

X&Y is the work of a neurotic. Whereas most boring music emulates the quiet of Sunday morning (think Norah Jones), Martin songs are narrated from the middle of the night, pacing without leaving his bed. In “What If,” he imagines losing all that’s important, even his wife and child: “Every step that you take / Could be your biggest mistake,” he moans in his beautiful, gray-cloud voice. That’s his thesis statement. A worrywart and a fusspot, he deploys a recurring set of images and themes, pitting hope against despair. “How can you know it when you don’t even try,” he ponders in “What If”; “But if you never try you’ll never know,” he repeats two songs later; “If you never try then you’ll never know,” he swoons in “Speed of Sound,” the magnificent first single. His lyrics look great at the bottom of e-mail sigs, and if that’s not a compliment, it recognizes his gift for a rallying cry; when he sang “Give me real, don’t give me fake” on Coldplay’s last album, A Rush of Blood to the Head, he summoned everyone who was grousing about Britney Spears. Politicians have been elected on lesser platforms.

Martin’s obsessed, hounded. So he envisions disastrous skies and murderous seas, glimpses a distant apocalypse with “computers looking for life on earth,” longs for order and symmetry, mourns impermanence, and damns puzzles for being, well, puzzling. All the while, the three bandmates no sane person can name supersize their British folk-rock, bolstering St. Paul’s Cathedral organs and guitar sounds as big and mysterious as NASA missions with a more modern drum pulse. Liam Gallagher of Oasis, a jerk but also one of culture’s last social-class warriors, has said that Martin “looks like a geography teacher,” and there’s a lot to that insult, aside from a slur on receding hairlines.

 

Martin’s mother was a teacher and his father was an accountant, and they bequeathed him an entirely middle-class faith in communication and logic. When his fears swirl into chaos, Martin longs to talk: Between “Tell me how you feel” in “Talk” and “Say how you feel” in “Twisted Logic,” and “You just want somebody listening to what you say” in “Square One,” the CD would make a great ad campaign for the American Psychiatric Association.

 

Except that talking just leads him back to worrying. “Fix You,” a pledge of understanding probably inspired by Apple, was previewed weeks ago on The O.C., which is apt. At 28, Martin is a grown-up adolescent. Compared with Bono, his stated role model, Martin has a narrow emotional range. So while Coldplay gets accused of aping U2’s spectacular guitar effects and Radiohead’s falsetto peals, the singer’s roots go back another twenty years: He’s an old-fashioned singer-songwriter who peddles his angst like Jackson Browne mulling his wife’s suicide or James Taylor recounting his nervous breakdown.

 

It couldn’t have helped Martin’s neuroses that the delays in releasing this record caused a substantial drop in EMI’s stock price. But buying on the dip would’ve been smart. Only one track here is too weak to be a hit, and that’s “A Message,” an appalling, straight-faced love song. (Don’t believe me? It starts, “My song is love,” then gets worse.) The record company might still be releasing singles from X&Y when Apple Martin starts college. “Is there anybody out there who / Is lost and hurt and lonely too?,” Martin croons in “Square One.” And the answer is yes—about 10 million others.

 

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/music/pop/reviews/11890/

:o

:lol:

"Coldplay’s Chris Martin is one repressed, neurotic pop star.

The band’s name gets it backward: Play Cold is more like it. Your level of interest in their music probably correlates with your willingness to be bored

Martin “looks like a geography teacher,” and there’s a lot to that insult, aside from a slur on receding hairlines.

It starts, “My song is love,” then gets worse."

:sick:

Why do they hate Chris????

:sick: is the smilie to summarize this article

The hell? He insults and compliments them at the same time. Or did I read that too quickly?

wow.. I dont if its a good review or a bad one.. I just think he was free writing or something.. he compliments and negatively gives thoughts on the album all at once

Weird review, but thanks.

The hell? He insults and compliments them at the same time. Or did I read that too quickly?

 

He kind of does :stunned:

I read it over incase I was missing something. Really weird review to say the least. Kinda sounds like he never liked Coldplay or their music in the past, but approves of X&Y.

Or maybe he's just schitzophrenic :idea2:

yeah that was a review? and whats with the knock on a message being "apalling"

oh who cares...they dont know what they are saying...X&Y is incredible

The hell? He insults and compliments them at the same time. Or did I read that too quickly?

 

He kind of does :stunned:

 

hahaha that's exactly what i thought :lol:

but he isn't even talking about the music :confused:

If that is a review than I am The King of Underpants.

isnt New York Metro that kind of crapy news papers/sources!?

he critisizes Chris for being neurotic and constantly positive or negative..........but does the same thing in his review.

haha, just pitiful writing..... i was most offended by the fact that he said "no sane person can name the other three band members." what a dick. jonny adds so much to this album. Will too. Guy probably (I haven't heard all the tracks yet). What a douche

I guess we're all insane.

I think that the whole point of this article is that this guy who wrote it wanted to say he liked the album but was too worried about getting slammed by his ultra-hipster friends that he used his dislike for Chris Martin to frame his review. I hate people like that. Actually, I hate music critics like that...

 

Some people just for some reason really dislike Chris Martin, and I do not get it. Is it that Chris's emotions are so out there and that people can't stand it? Is it that people become unnerved when they see how happy he is or how self-conscious he is? Is he not rock-star enough for people? Is it the fact that he knows he shouldn't love his own music so much but he does anyways? Or it is that he loves other people's music so much and has no shame about emulating guitar riffs and drum beats for the sake of a good record???

 

I have no clue. All I know is that dislike for a person, especially one like Chris Martin, who means no harm (maybe that's it! He's just not badass enough), should not be reason not to like a band's music...

 

....in my humble opinion....

I think that the whole point of this article is that this guy who wrote it wanted to say he liked the album but was too worried about getting slammed by his ultra-hipster friends that he used his dislike for Chris Martin to frame his review. I hate people like that. Actually, I hate music critics like that...

 

 

....in my humble opinion....

 

Your humble opinion is dead on. All these meticulously labored "it's pretty great for sucky music" reviews are rediculous. :smoking:

Yeah I think this reviewer is just trying to get a headline by writing a negative review. He Blasts "A Message", thats one of my favourites! Its far too personal against Chris.