Wednesday, April 30, 2008

"violet hill" by coldplay


it was a long and dark december, from the rooftops i remember, there was snow, white snow...

Love 'em or hate 'em, Coldplay are a force to be reckoned with. Their first three studio albums, Parachutes, A Rush of Blood to the Head and X&Y sold millions -- they've topped the charts for weeks on end, and they sound bloody good too (even if Chris Martin is, let's face it, a little girly).

After the release of X&Y, fans got really really worried when news hit that they were taking a 'break' as 'break's usually mean 'sorry guys, we're not going to do another album for years and years because we're off rediscovering ourselves in the depths of Latin America/splitting up for 'a while' to 'do new things'/keen on spending time with things like, y'know, our wives and funny-named kids' or something of the sort (Franz Ferdinand, I'm lookin' at you), and many of us poor sods resigned ourselves to actually giving X&Y a proper listen or five (even though it was no patch on A Rush of Blood and certainly not a match for "Yellow" or "Trouble" or any other of their confusingly similarly-titled one-word songs) while we contemplated the next decade without Coldplay to be spiritual and new age-y to.

So when the band decided to release their newest single,"Violet Hill", fans all over the world (or I, at least -- and I will freely admit I'm not their number one fan or anything of the sort) were surprised and shocked and tentatively checked the date to make sure it wasn't, like, 2030 or something like that (because it doesn't feel like decades) before rejoicing, getting themselves their fancy free MP3 of Coldplay's new surprisingly dark-looking site and setting in for a good listen as they waited for Chris Martin's waily girly but surprisingly touching vocals to, er, touch them.

Well, I can't speak for the rest of the Coldplay fanbase, but I was touched.

If you haven't listened to it yet, let me tell you: it's different.

I'm not the most musically literate person ever, but I'm going to try my hardest to explain the schematics of this song to you. It starts off quiet, gradually getting louder and louder -- not music, as such, but a sort of hum, anticipatory. Chris starts singing before the music starts, really -- strong piano notes before being joined by a surprisingly heavy guitar. His voice is low, hard -- kind of jaded. I could totally see him sitting on a stool with a hat shading his eyes in some anonymous bar, baring his soul to a crowd of captive, er, bar patrons. Chris doesn't sound like a girl (for the majority of it at least). By the time the chorus hits you're sitting there, suddenly sad and bitter and angry in the best way possible -- you're in that bar, nursing that drink, listening to this stranger tell you about his strife, so roused you don't even care that Chris suddenly sounds like a girl again. And so on, until suddenly it gets quiet again -- and you kind of want to cry, because he sounds so jaded and by now you're totally intoxicated and life isn't fair and hey maybe you should like, call that girl who you cruelly dumped in that backwater town some time ago and tell her it's not her fault you're a callous bastard who has commitment issues.

Okay, so that was a crap description. Cut me some slack. But seriously, this is no "Trouble", guys. This is no "Clocks" or "Yellow" or "Speed of Sound" or, well, anything you've ever really heard from Coldplay before. This is dark, genuinely dark, and they've had dark songs before but this is seriously jaded. You're left wondering what exactly those guys found in Latin America, whether their family lives are really as peachy as they're making out to be, whether those totally fabricated rumours that Chris and co. are getting group therapy are really as ridiculous as they sounded back when they were going around*.

* which was never, incidentally, as I made them up just now to illustrate a point.

I have to admit I didn't like it when I first heard it. Well, alright, I didn't not like it -- I guess I didn't know what to think. It's just so different, like somebody broke Coldplay. It reminds me of war, and that book I read when I was eleven that made me bawl because everyone was dying, and mortality and death and destruction and ruin and corruption of good things and the shattering of lives -- no, Coldplay's not broken, Coldplay's matured. This isn't the idealistic "Politik" or "A Rush of Blood to the Head", this is what happens after you draft philanthropist Chris Martin into the army and make him watch millions of people die due to stupidity and then laugh in his face before discharging him with naught but the boots on his feet. It's critical -- "when the future's architectured/by a carnival of idiots on show/you'd better lie low" -- it's poignant -- "bury me in honour/when I'm dead and hit the ground" -- it's just so bitter I want to give Chris a hug and tell him to go listen to "Don't Panic" and that things will be alright again.

Really, my only complaint is that it's too short. I want more!

Honestly, guys, it's made me terribly excited about the new album -- Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends (isn't that the most depressingly awesome title ever?). I think it's going to be epic. And once it's released and whoever the Roger Ebert of music says it's also epic, I'm going to point you back to this post and say, hey, I told you first.

Ebert that, bitch.

Song: Violet Hill
Artist: Coldplay
Album: Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends

Rating: 9.5/10*

* for being too short.

1 comment:

Cube said...

ooo nice, I love 'violet hill' :D