Heard Here

Coldplay
A Rush of Blood to the Head

A Coldplay day goes something like this: you wake up with a bad hangover and a fading relationship on your mind, smash your head on your bedside lamp, spill toothpaste on your shirt, miss the bus, arrive late to work, read about the latest environmental disaster in the paper, work overtime and make it home late only to find that all your friends have gone out without giving you a ring. Lead-singer Christ Martin and his buddies just never seem to be in a good mood, and their beautifully languid 2000 debut, Parachutes, practically dripped with melancholy.
But a few cloudy days can inspire some truly great music. The Cure’s Robert Smith and The Smith’s Morrissey, both of whom deserved much higher prescription of Paxal in their day than Martin would ever require, have penned some of the most wonderful, mopey tunes ever recorded. Coldplay’s new record, A Rush of Bood to the Head, proves not only that their debut and its immensely popular single “Yellow” weren’t fluxes, but that anxiety, loneliness and sincerity, all of which the new record displays in spades, can produce some damn good rock n’ roll.
The album starts off with more chutzpah than the debut ever had. Written the week after Sept. 11, “Potlik” has the whole band pounding out eighth notes in unison as Martin pleads with his listeners to “open up your eyes/ Just open up your eyes.” The following track and the album’s first single, “In My Place,” is sure to win over everyone who fell in love with “Yellow,” the new track being nearly as perfect of a pop song. Martin’s pleading falsetto is back and guitarist Jon Buckland’s chiming guitar fills sound like St. Paul’s cathedral bells at a royal funeral. But many of Blood’s best songs let Martin’s new-found affinity for the piano shine. “The Scientist” and “Amsterdam” are both brash and full-bodied piano ballads, while the repeating riff in “Clocks” has enough bombast to be a Sandra Collins outtake.
Blood only stumbles when Martin lets his sometimes-schmaltzy candor get the best of him. The puppy love sentiments of “Green Eyes” feel as out of place as they do derivative and unimpassioned, and “Warning Sign” sounds like someone attempting an uninspired parody of Coldplay themselves. Fortunately, the band rarely let Martin’s familiar group of musicians and songwriters. Though far from guaranteeing them “best band of all time” status, something which Martin expressed interest in attaining in a recent Billboard interview, Coldplay have recorded an album with as much grace and style as that of any moody rock band.

–John Macdonald

Anna Waronker
Anna

After years of writing jingles for short-lived television shows and soundtracks (like Josie and the Pussycats – though don’t let the ridiculousness of the movie turn you off from her amazing songwriting abilities) and cultivating her solo-artist status, Anna Waronker has proven that she doesn’t need no band. The mastermind of the low-key grunge-pop genius of the now defunct L.A. band that dog., Waronker broke with the band in the late ‘90sand has been preparing her arsenal of songs ever since. This time the album is all on her – she wrote all the brilliant, quirky tunes and performed, recorded, mixed and even released the album herself, on her new label with the Go-Go’s Charlotte Caffey, Five Foot Two Records.
Caffey is not only a business partner and sister-in-law (she and Waronker are both married to the McDonald brothers from the L.A. band Redd Kross), but an obvious and overwhelming influence on Waronker’s tendency toward pop – not just the overly-saccharine rock variety but the melancholy, revenge and punk-influenced sort, too. Think of Anna as the Go-Go’s for a new millennium. The Go-Go’s are cool when they play their old stuff, but recent releases have failed to live up to their former three-part-harmony/power chord glory. That’s where Waronker has taken over. The album is like the perfect mix between “We’ve Got the Beat” and “Fading Fast” with a nice helping of Aimee Mann-inspired moments, minus her overwhelming rhymes.
Take “Perfect Ten,” for example; the song is cool enough with just the repetitive distorted guitar riffs, but the piano forces the song along as Waronker, through voice effects, sounds as intimidating as possible with, “Use me once twice and don’t do it again/ This time’s the last time/ ’Cause baby I’m your perfect ten.” It’s a subtle aggressiveness that the Go-Go’s never completely mastered, due to Belinda Carlisle’s too-nice voice. “How Do You Sleep?” boasts more of Waronker’s straightforward anger, maybe directed at some of her former overbearing bandmates: “You’ll never last, no, not a girl like you/ And I’m not gonna let you push me/ ’Cause I’m gonna push you.” It’s a perfect summation of the album: upbeat and succinct and unbelievably catchy.
What makes Anna so interesting, though, is not Waronker’s mastery of typical singer-songwriter pop-quirkiness, but her ability to slide into so many other styles. There are slower ballads like “Beautiful,” where she experiments with drum loops and minimal keyboard arrangements and the severe sadness and strings of “John and Maria.” The album’s final song, “Goodbye,” is certainly a clichéd closing argument, but keeps alive the struggle between optimistic, upbeat rock and slow, piano-driven contemplation.

–Kari Wethington