“I want to fly, never come down/And live my life, and have
friends around”
- Coldplay, “We Never Change”
Unity doesn’t get much respect in music criticism. The appearance
of chaos, of many voices saying many things, gathered up under the pretext of a
common subject, is far more valued, as it is seen as more difficult to
manufacture. Homophony, many voices speaking as one, is dismissed as overly
classical, while polyphony, the sounds of loosely yoked chaos, reigns as the
ideal.
This preference is hardly difficult to call up examples of,
especially now that the pre-ripped jeans aesthetic of dubstep and grime has
infiltrated the mainstream pop scene. The most prized producers are now
regularly achieving the Dickensian feat of speaking in many different voices,
layering instrument upon instrument in an effort to baffle the listener into
praise. It often works, simply because layer upon layer of music can very
easily seem impressive, by dint of sheer scale and power. I didn’t necessarily
like most of the album, but Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
exemplifies that idea of “more is more” as much as Queen did back in the 70s
with A Night At The Opera; putting issues of songwriting aside, most
people can agree that both albums sound impressive from the layering and
production alone.
That massive production goes back for decades in Western
music, dating back to Phil Spector’s work with wall-of-sound production and the
baroque pop style of The Beach Boys. Moreso than Spector, who, as the name of his
production style suggests, favored a unified wall of instruments, a bludgeon of
sound, The Beach Boys reveled in the styles that required the kind of riches
they were granted. “Good Vibrations” is the sound of a master songwriter
dumping out his toybox and staging a large-scale play for all of his friends,
just as “Power” is the sound of one man yelling his own praises over a mob’s
jeers.
Taking the idea even farther are songs like “Starships”,
which I had the grave misfortune of hearing recently. Songs like this aim for
sensory overstimulation, hitting you with as many big hooks and production
layers as possible, sounding, to me at least, like a thousand children’s toys
cheerfully burning to death. Taking that as the sound of synth overkill, we can
glance over at Oasis’ “My Big Mouth” for an example of rock overkill; the band
layered the same guitar track 30 times and the result sounds as cluttered as
the album cover looks. It’s impressive in the way that the Experience Music
Project in Seattle is impressive: big and ugly. Make something large enough and
people are bound to notice it, if not praise it.
Taking all this into account, it’s fairly easy to see why
Coldplay, and Parachutes in particular, is so easily and quickly
dismissed. The music on the band’s debut is as blurred and softly illuminated
as the globe lamp on its cover; the music is slow, the notes are long, and not
a thing is out of place. There are layers, sure, but nothing seems doubled or
stacked, instead simply existing in its proper place and time. Aside from
overdubbing and some ADT, the production is largely muted, letting the band
serve the songs with minimum fuss.
It’s the lack of over-production that really surprised me
going back to this album after so many years of Coldplay’s current,
string-drenched style. Much to my surprise, I can’t hear any strings at all on Parachutes;
even the piano riffs that form the backbone of so many modern-era Coldplay
songs are largely absent. It’s all surprisingly spare, a term I never dreamed I
would use to describe Coldplay up until prepping this write-up.
I’m not trying to say that Coldplay are minimalists, mind
you. Even at their best, the band tends to try to make their sentiments overly
clear; understatement is not Chris Martin’s finest gift as a lyricist. Rather
than making their music skeletal, Coldplay are focused on making their music
hazy, best shown in their constant use of distorted guitar riffs. The same tool
John Lennon and George Martin used to kick listeners square in the gut with “Revolution”
is here used to dull edges; there’s probably an echo pedal thrown in to quite a
bit of this as well, though I’m not quite well-versed enough in effects to
tell.
Martin’s breathy falsetto causes much of that dulling as
well. Like Thom Yorke, his most obvious vocal predecessor, Martin has been
blessed (or cursed, if you prefer) with a voice that can never sound truly
ugly, no matter what he sings. It’s a gift that Yorke has often complained
about, but Martin uses it to what I assume is deliberate effect on every song
on the album, breathing out melodies as much as singing them. Like many pop
albums, the musicians of the group follow suit, playing their parts with smooth
legato.
That sense of everything fitting together into a real whole
is likely what puts people off the album. It feels like smooth jazz or adult
contemporary in that no element of the music is particularly challenging or
difficult to get into. Coldplay doesn’t do anything particularly unusual or
new, especially on Parachutes, which lacks even the slight production flairs
of their later albums. The music is like a bokeh behind Chris Martin’s voice; a
collection of colors blurred into a single texture.
The fact that Coldplay succeeded at that style so assuredly
is remarkable, though not as remarkable as how dismissive they are of it. When
describing “Yellow”, the breakout single of the album and one of its best
songs, Martin has varied between describing its title and lyrical refrain as
either random or having been inspired by a copy of the Yellow Pages lying
around the studio. A more poetic reading, the one I prefer, ties it back to the
album cover, the image of a blurred, illuminated globe.
If we read “Yellow” this way, the album’s serenity and pleasantness
can be seen as deliberate choices rather than the result of having nothing to
say, as so many people have suggested. Like I’ve said so often on this blog,
any stylistic or artistic ‘mistake’ can be defended simply by explaining that
it was deliberate on the part of the artist. Judging from the cover, the
lyrics, and even the album title (what does the word ‘parachutes’ suggest if
not calmness?), I’d argue that any dullness one might read into the album is
the result of a conscious choice on the part of the band.
Not all music has to be challenging, nor does all music need
to be relentlessly innovative. One of my favorite albums by Van Morrison, Poetic
Champions Compose, was described by a friend of mine as “uncomfortably
close to Kenny G”, but that implies a level of mass market vying that I don’t
think Morrison is even capable of. Sometimes you play fast, sometimes you play
slow, and I don’t think either one can be objectively bad, so long as it’s done
with purpose and some manner of feeling. If Coldplay wants to be pleasant then
I hardly see how that could be considered objectionable.
Complex music sounds more interesting because there’s a
sense of the band hanging onto the song by the skin of their teeth. In fact,
musicians like Jack White actively describe their playing style as something
akin to fighting their instrument, forcing sounds out of it. That’s all well
and good (obviously, considering I’ve made my admiration of White rather
plain), but I’d argue that creating a song that sounds at peace with itself is
no mean feat. There’s a great deal of composition that goes into such things,
and the fact that Martin and the rest of the band are dismissed as songwriters
for making such pieces is ludicrous. Say you don’t like Coldplay all you like,
but creating something at peace itself is no less difficult than making something
at battle.
No comments:
Post a Comment