Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002)

I kept hearing this amazing song on the radio at work, but I could somehow never catch what it was or who it was by; and it took me about a year to work out that it was actually Coldplay. This came as something of a surprise because although admittedly it sort of sounded like Coldplay in slightly more pensive mood, it sounded better than Coldplay.

I never developed any particular loathing for Coldplay, but never saw any particular mystery in the idea that anyone might have done so. They sounded like an absurdly formulaic version of something which might have been more listenable under other circumstances, music for estate agents and automotive commercials, music for photogenic home insurance couples who'd listen to U2 but would rather not have to think about those kids in Africa with flies on their faces - corporate angst; and that's even before we get to Gwyneth's fanny candles.

Nevertheless, God Put a Smile Upon Your Face really wormed its way into my head - a song which sounds like the moment before a thunderstorm stretched out to three minutes, a depressive, doom-laden crescendo running away from itself. I would have bought the 7" but I'm not sure it existed, and CD singles always seemed like a bit of a waste of time, so here I am with an entire album - eleven fucking tracks. Strangely, tracks two to five were all singles, preserved here as a big chunk of hits at the beginning of the album and serving as a lesson in why it's taken me two decades to buy a cheap second-hand copy. It's not that In My Place, Clocks, or The Scientist are poor songs so much as that they're the same fucking song, and hearing it every thirteen minutes or so on whatever turdy indie station we kept it locked to at work used to get pretty fucking painful some weeks. Hearing them again after twenty years without the additional gurgling testimony of Jono Coleman or Christian O'Connell or some other dreadful fucking twat is less painful than I expected, and the more I listen, the more obvious it becomes that it's the context rather than the songs. This may also tally with the fact that God Put a Smile Upon Your Face didn't do anything like so well as the other three singles and never quite got to the point of outstaying its welcome at East Dulwich SDO.

Starting again at the beginning, allowing Coldplay a fair crack at the whip and ignoring both the terrible name and unfortunate association with Gwyneth's fanny candles, this isn't a bad album. In fact I find it unusually listenable. It isn't really that the good stuff amounts to the tracks which weren't singles, although there's a subtle difference in mood which probably accounts for In My Place, Clocks and The Scientist having been picked out; but the material you may not already have heard a million times somehow sounds more like a real band, and certainly less formulaic in pushing all those emo buttons with wistful verses building up to the same crescendo every time. Wikipedia gives their influences as bog standard hyper-mainstream shite but to me they sound like a post-psychedelic band, essentially Codeine with bigger production and Beatley chord changes; and this album is a lot more depressive than you might expect. I realise that this record should be shite but isn't probably doesn't fully qualify as praise, but I'm still slightly stunned to find myself listening to Coldplay and enjoying it. Had we never heard of them, had we not had to endure so many years of having them shoved down our throats over and over and over, it might be easier to listen past the bullshit and appreciate what they do.