Coldplay - Our Review

Read our review of Violet Hill

29 April 2008 - The new single from Coldplay, Violet Hill, the first track from their fourth album Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends is neither the bold re-imagining of the band’s sound that some anticipated, nor a familiar reworking of their past.

The opening atmospheric wash of sound and the piano intro are textbook Coldplay, but when the distorted, tense opening guitar chords and lolloping drums arrive, things take a left turn.

Chris Martin’s voice may sound the same as ever (no sign of the rumoured crazed falsetto) but the band sound distinctly different. It’s almost like U2’s Where The Streets Have No Name played by Avalon-era Roxy Music.

Lyrically, it’s a more ambitious, ambiguous affair than many of Coldplay’s biggest tracks. Full of architectural and religious imagery. In the verses Martin sings of windows, rooftops, churches and cathedrals. At one point witnessing as “the cross was held aloft…” and priests who “clutch on to their bibles, hollowed out fit their rifles.”

There’s no traditional chorus per se, just a repeated refrain of “If you love me, won’t you let me know…” followed by Secret Machines-esque cymbal and chord walloping. And oddly it’s this musical phrase, the simplest in the track, that proves the most effective and moving,

Oddest of all is Johnny Buckland’s solo. Eschewing his traditional soaring sustained notes the centrepiece of the song is a melodic light-hearted (jolly even) glam rock guitar loop. Which - if nothing else on the track - bears the fingerprints of producer Brian Eno, sounding like nothing else on the record. And indeed little that the band have recorded before.

Eventually, the track relaxes for a delicate piano and intimate vocal outro which finds Chris and his loved one, alone together on a snow-tipped Violet Hill.

In all, it leaves you expecting a more ambitious experimental album to follow (the massive pressure that rests on the shoulder of Viva La Vida will have most likely dictated the choice of one of the less controversial songs as the lead single) but satisfied that the band are’t just treading water.

And the more you hear it, the better its sounds….


Matt Everitt