X&Y

“It’s a lot more confident,” said bass player Guy Berryman while promoting 2002’s ‘A Rush of Blood to the Head’. “Nothing’s changed, technology wise, it’s just we’ve got better at doing what we do.”

And he was right. The album was a stellar leap forward — in quality and conviction — deservedly turning Coldplay from just another shoegazing British band into a kazillion-selling global phenomenon that, unlike many big names from the isle, Broke Into America Like The Beatles.

Not surprising then that there’s a lot riding on the follow-up, so much so that a delay in the release of ‘X&Y’ has been blamed for a 13 percent profit drop at their record company EMI. It can’t have done much for the execs’ stress levels that the recording process was, shall we say, a little tortured — with early sessions ditched and some 60 songs abandoned it turned into an 18-month process stretched across eight studios.

It can’t have been an easy year-and-a-half for the band either. What are you supposed to do if there’s immense pressure to deliver an equally successful follow-up? Or if your lead singer’s a perpetual worrier? Or if every second band coming out of Britain (stand up Keane, Embrace, Athlete) sound exactly like you?

If you’re Radiohead, you flip your middle finger to the world and release an album that has critics in rapture and the record-buying public thoroughly confused. But, if you’re intent on tackling U2 to become the Biggest Band In The World Today, you do what worked last time. You give the punters what they want — more of the same. There’s too much at stake to take a major risk.

Quite tellingly, this time there’s been nothing like Berryman's 2002 comment: “There was never any pressure from us or the record company to make a record that sounded the same. There was no recipe we were trying to repeat.”

That’s not entirely fair on Chris Martin and the boys, though. With ‘X&Y’ they’ve delivered an album that’s easily as good as ‘A Rush Of Blood To The Head’ — but not better. And that’s the problem: there hasn’t been another one of those stellar leaps forward that people, perhaps too ambitiously, were expecting.

Instead, they’ve played it safe, consolidating their sound and incorporating a few new influences — no doubt to separate themselves from the countless Coldplay soundalikes out there.

Ambitious (and rather tasty) opener ‘Square One’, hijacks Pink Floyd’s spacey ‘70s synth sounds and acoustic ‘Wish You Were Here’ strum, bravely separating the bookends with a U2-style anthem. Complete with chiming guitar and rumbling rhythm section, it sounds remarkably like the Irish quartet’s stellar ‘City Of Blinding Lights’ — but it’s always been a good idea to check out what the competition’s up to.

The only problem is that these university boys may have spent more time looking over U2’s shoulder than at their own exam paper. So while Coldplay have bravely worked hard to cut down on those piano crescendos that became their hallmark, they’ve largely been replaced with those very same crescendos played in The Edge’s “thousands-bells-ringing” guitar sound, to borrow a Guardian critic’s phrase.

It’s no more noticeable than on ‘Talk’ — admittedly a superb track — that turns a Kraftwerk hook into a song that would make Bono proud. Maybe even, at a stretch, humble. Just witness the interplay between Jonny Buckland’s guitar and Martin’s piano. Magic.

While 'Low' finds the band mining the New Order sound, they return to more familiar territory on first single 'Speed Of Sound', using every Coldplay cliché in the book — near-falsetto vocals; insecure lyrics ("How long do I have to climb up the side of this mountain of mud?"); tasteful keyboard washes; subtle guitar licks; and, the giveaway, 'Clocks'-style piano line — to bridge the gap with 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head'.

Equally familiar, but less welcome, are the plaintive piano-and-strings ballads like 'What If'; their starkness exposing Martin's bleeding heart-lyrics ("What if she should decide that she don’t want me there by her side") and at-times-pained voice that gets right up your nose instead of welling up those emotions.

Far more successful, though is album closer 'Twisted Logic' — equally sparse but, for Coldplay, incredibly oppressive, dark and menacing with its snarling guitars contrasting Martin's tortured voice. The song's hardly got hit written all over it, but it is very refreshing to find the band moving into a new territory without sounding like they've borrowed from somebody else. And, like 'X&Y', it doesn’t hit you with a knock-out punch on first listen; it grows on you in a way their previous albums didn’t — or couldn’t.