Coldplay Stays Hot in Its Modest Way
By Alan Light
Chris Martin, 31, is possibly the most self-deprecating lead singer in pop history, constantly saying things like “I don’t listen to our records because it makes me break out in tears and sweat,” and “We have a rule that only the four of us can ever be onstage because we don’t want to be upstaged by someone more attractive.”
On June 17, however, Coldplay will release its fourth album, “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends” (Capitol), and even Martin is having a hard time retaining his modesty about it. The release, which was co-produced by Brian Eno, marks a leap forward for the group, adding experimental textures, arrangements and structures to its music while retaining the sweeping melodies and soaring hooks at the heart of its enormous appeal.
“When you get to a fourth record, you have to be really careful about how much you sing, because people aren’t surprised by your voice anymore,” Martin said. “So you have to think of new things.”
But this is an especially charged time for Coldplay to try reinventing itself. Since the release of its previous album, “X&Y,” in 2005, the band’s record company, EMI, has been sold to Terra Firma, a private equity firm; thousands of employees have been laid off; and rumors of crisis are nonstop.
Recently it was reported that Terra Firma would be fighting to meet financial targets set by the bank that helped finance the purchase of EMI. The Times of London wrote that the performance of the new album from the label’s top-selling act would be “critical to any recovery” for the company.
The band is doing its best to ignore the commercial pressure. But it is trying to innovate with its marketing plan.
“Violet Hill,” the dark, thumping first single from “Viva la Vida,” was offered free on the band’s Web site (coldplay.com) for a week and was downloaded more than two million times, according to the band’s representatives. The band is playing three free shows this month – one at Brixton Academy in London on June 16, one at the Espacio Movistar in Barcelona on June 17 and one in New York on June 23 – with tickets being given away in lotteries.
The biggest accomplishment of “Vida” is the sense it gives of Coldplay as a genuine band. In addition to being the frontman and primary songwriter, Martin is a tabloid fixture thanks to his marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow, which has only amplified the sense that the group’s other three, less visible members (Jonny Buckland is the guitarist, Guy Berryman is the bassist, and Will Champion is the drummer) are little more than sidemen.
Martin said the band sat down about two years ago, after a lengthy tour behind “X&Y,” and said, “If we carry on like this, it’s going to appear like a one-man show, and it’s going to get very boring very quickly.” So, he explained, “everybody felt like they had to rip it up and start again.”
The first step was setting up in their own studio, a former bakery in London that Martin described as “a beaten-up little place, down a drunken alleyway.”
“We’ve got a clubhouse, a space to be ourselves and not worry about anyone hearing any terrible music we make or hearing us argue,” Buckland said. “We haven’t had that since 1998, when we were in my bedroom.”
Another crucial decision was to bring in Eno to produce the album with Markus Dravs, who has worked with Arcade Fire and Bjork. Eno’s approach opened up the members of Coldplay to ideas and sounds they never expected.
“Brian would get us all in a circle in a tiny room, and we’d just play and play and play,” Martin said. “Then he’d go through and listen and start to find these little minable bits, and he’d hone in on those.”
Everyone around Coldplay speaks of the confidence that emerged as these sessions progressed over many months. Martin credited some of that attitude to what he learned from collaborating with Jay-Z and Kanye West on tracks for their albums.
“What I really appreciate about both of them is they are set on their path and nothing sways them from it,” he said. “They’re just doing their thing, and you’re either with it or you’re not. I really feed off of that, because that’s not familiar to us; we come from the nation of pulling at your hair and apologizing all the time.”
Over a chai latte in New York recently, Martin discussed one of the central tracks on “Viva la Vida.” The song “42″ begins with the classic Coldplay sound – Martin at the piano, delivering a profound- sounding rhyme in his upper register at a slow tempo – but after about 90 seconds it spirals off into multiple sections.
“That song is kind of a microcosm” of the entire album, he said. “The lyrics in the beginning are very much big themes, but then we go into this kind of silly jam we wrote one day when we were all hypnotized, and then it ends with this big, up-tempo, positive thing. I don’t know if it’s any good, but it definitely captures everything in one place.”
The one thing Martin insists never came into the studio was any sense of commercial pressure. The band members got too wrapped up in the business side the last time out, he said, and now they’re trying to keep their heads down.
“I get embarrassed having to talk about it,” he said, “because nobody cares outside of this tiny world.
“I mean, we would love to be the biggest band in the world” – he flashed a grin – “but we understand if you don’t want us to be.”
Originally published by The New York Times Media Group.
(c) 2008 International Herald Tribune. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.