X & Y; Funeral

What, you wonder, were Coldplay aiming for when they set out to make X & Y? Did they say, Let's just make a solid set that will sound good in a stadium? And three years later they had a crafted, beautifully structured bunch of dull, rawk plodders, all stamped with fluting, high vocals, which cry "I am emotional" (so long as you don't focus too closely on the empty toneless lyrics). You build a picture of the band from it: inoffensive, nice boys, who have never suffered in their lives, who have the stirrings of feeling (the usual middle-class anxieties: I am alienated, I am too pampered, I am unable to feel, I want to do more) but lack the vocabulary, emotional and lexical, to express it in anything beyond mumbling.

It doesn't hurt the ears. It's produced to within an inch of its life, and the chord sequences are lovingly honed. But there's not a tune to be sniffed: each song a muddy swirl of guitar, Martin's voice to the fore. The only riff that makes you sit up and listen is the rather incongruous lift of Computer love's theme on Talk. What were they thinking? Did they think they were paying a homage to Kraftwerk? Did they think they were improving on it? Sadly, Martin's banal musings on how good it is to talk are not a patch on Kraftwerk's arch hymn to internet dating. "You could take a picture of something you see/In the future where will I be/You could climb a ladder up to the sun/Or write a song nobody had sung/Or do something that's never been done". Erm. I defy you to listen and not break into Climb every mountain.

It would be easy to suggest that this is symptomatic of a band that has struggled to make its third album, who have found the fire that impelled them as youngsters has guttered and burns lower. But Coldplay never were particularly fiery. Their music has always tended to the anodyne, Martin's lyrics have always lacked substance. Their popularity was built on hummable riffs and a distinctive voice that sang songs you could sing along with without concerning yourself over much with what they were saying. They were comfortable and there will always be a market for comfort in music. More so than ever in these days, when innovation has all but died in rock, and the new is all too often a retread of an old that was a lot better.

In direct contrast are Arcade Fire, who burn the place down with an album that is incandescent. Each song bursts with invention, and each keeps giving. You think you have got to the bottom of a song and then you hear another nuance. An astonishing range of influences are reflected in Funeral but the sound is entirely distinctive.

It is life-affirming. The songs talk about hope, love and the lack of both. They talk about a world that tries to smother and hurt us, but knows that "guns can't kill what soldiers can't see". Win Butler's striking voice craves attention, forces you to listen, grabs you by the gut and won't let go. My only complaint is that because they had attended a few in the time they were making the album, they called it Funeral. They could equally have called it Life, because it bursts at the seams with it.

posted by Dr Zen @ 12:19 pm