At least with U2 there was a golden age in the late 1990s that cemented their position as a major rock and roll band, a heavyweight you know, who can stand up with the best of them. Coldplay never had that. They were always kinda lousy, a band who stole their biggest songs off better songwriters and remodeled it in their own image.
Live, they were pretty good for half an hour but over 105 minutes deadly. And as album bands go, three whatevers in a row. Not really good enough to get seriously indignant about, but also not good enough to do anything but raise an eyebrow over, that was Chris Martin and the rest of Coldplay.
Until now. Album # 4 Ghost Stories comes wrapped in a divorce for Chris, some pretty iffy pretty stuff, and two single that have done nothing very much. But the album itself is probably their best to date. It is all of piece and the piece is a drab, dour, slow, tangible downer. It is about as far away from popular pop music as you can guess and, look, if we can’t agree that Coldplay were playing popstars and wanted hits, well then all along they were just crap, so their refusal to pursue the charts is at act of integrity. The whole thing about pop is it should be popular and if the hook to “Magic” didn’t break, this album will not do well.
Maybe it doesn’t deserve to but at least it deserves to be treated with respect because really it isn’t even slightly compromised, it deserves to be a serious downer, it is a downer the way Beck’s Sea Changes was, only with far more literal language at its disposal. It isn’t art, it doesn’t really hold you, rather it is like a junkie spiraling out of control: everything is done in slow motion. The thing about Ghost Stories is if you can get past Chris Martin’s profound lack of poetic ability, his complete inability to offer anything remotely close to an insight into the hell of breaking up, of divorce, the sounds and the tone tell the story that needs to be told. Have you ever heard Marvin Gaye’s Here My Dear? You have? Well forget about it completely. Martin can’t put across why he is so hurt, he won’t mention his children, won’t paint in the shadings, or even give you the outlines, of his life with his wife. But on the opening “Always In My Head” with Chris intoning “I think of you, I haven’t slept” and while choirs whine the ineffable, it kinda makes sense. “Magic” has a good hook, and the rest of the album, except for some soundscape thingy, maintains it.
It’s like somebody writing their story but they aren’t a great story teller even while the feelings are true, the depth of their sorrow is real, but they can’t quite get it across. Ghost Stories is the real thing, it feels like the real thing, the ache on “A Sky Full Of Stars” is real, but Coldplay can’t put it across, they can’t sell it the way Beck could. Not one song here had me running for the eject but not one song had me heading for repeat either; Nothing moved me to tears, and nothing quite moved me to contempt either. If I had lost a girl, I wouldn’t turn to this album, and lordy will coldplay have a headache trying to sell “ink” or “Another’s Arms” in Arena’s round the work. It won’t match up to their past sales and they will come back really fast to record New Morning. But it is my favorite of their albums; I grudgingly admire the boys, and Chris specifically, for doing what spoke most clearly to them.
Grade: B-
