Coldplay - X&Y (2005)

1) Square One; 2) What If; 3) White Shadows; 4) Fix You; 5) Talk; 6) X&Y; 7) Speed of Sound; 8) A Message; 9) Low; 10) The Hardest Part; 11) Swallowed in the Sea; 12) Twisted Logic; 13) ‘Til Kingdom Come [hidden track] 

Giant band makes a giant album to reach giant expectations. And I know I should like it less than I do, but...

Key tracks: "White Shadows", "Talk", "The Hardest Part"

The X&Y era was not a good time for Coldplay. Well, statistically it was – it was a huge success of an album, propelled them from stadiums to even bigger stadiums, turned them from a huge band into one of the biggest on the planet and it gave the world “Fix You”, one of their signature hits and the soundtrack to so many game show elimination round survival celebrations on the BBC. But for the band it wasn’t the best of times. The shift in scale and scope from Parachutes to A Rush of Blood in the Head had been a natural process that happened without expectations or outside pressure. The mammothitis that runs through X&Y was a direct reaction for the sudden surge in popularity: the audiences got bigger as the songs did, and in order to appease new even bigger audiences the songs have got to get even bigger. Reactions like these create albums like X&Y: albums that sound huge and anthemic because they’re expected to sound huge and anthemic, and possibly because they need to be like that. It’s a creative rut as any and you can tell: it’s no wonder that Coldplay’s own reaction to X&Y was to burn the band as it was to the ground and then creatively re-invent themselves with Viva La Vida. 

Everything on X&Y is surgically crafted to perfection to the point that there’s no life to it. The production is so pristine and sterile that nearly all life is squeezed out, and even the acoustic hidden track “Til Kingdom Come” that attempts to be warm and intimate sounds clinical. All the songs are the size of a grand stadium, fireworks displays and all, yet borderline overblown and needlessly gigantic. The band sound stifled and almost non-existent: only Martin has any presence due to the obvious reason of his vocals being everywhere, everything else has as much personal touch as a session musician. X&Y tries so hard to be the kind of album that befits a global superstar act that it ends up losing what actually is Coldplay’s identity.

And… I still quite like it?

This is actually the album that got me into Coldplay, funnily enough. I had passed on the first two albums at the time because of vague reasons largely to do with my own stubbornness, but “Speed of Sound” was harder to skip. At the time it was everything I wanted – the spacey sound of a small galaxy, glistening keyboards and sky-soaring guitars, both an anthem and yet oddly intimate. Basically the kind of thing I was eating up at that point in my life and the song was so strong that it opened the doors for the band to me. Bu it’s a song that hasn’t really aged as well. Its galactic scope is pretty emblematic of X&Y as a whole: it definitely soars, but largely thanks to its loud and bright production rather than its writing. It’s no wonder it’s been brushed off to the secondary tier of Coldplay hits – enjoyable but hardly essential, more a sign of its time than a timeless hit.

But much like “Speed of Sound”, X&Y manages to stay afloat despite its weight. X&Y is nothing if not direct and universal – because it has to be in its position – and it’s a good job that’s always been Coldplay’s forté. Chris Martin and his fellow brothers at arms have a solid inventory of instantly affable and easily loveable melodies ready at hand to dispense, and even if the band themselves sound like they’re lost somewhere among the sound the basic melodic blocks of the songs aren’t. X&Y contains a number of songs that seem borderline superfluous when you look back at them, with “A Message”, “Swallowed in the Sea” and “What If” being so Coldplay-by-numbers it’s almost awkward, but damn it if they don’t charm you when they’re on. It’s like fast food – instant enjoyment but nothing you’d actively remember later on. 

One other major reason why X&Y is arguably far more listenable than it probably should be is because it houses a handful of big highlights that not break free from the flaws, but end up carrying the rest of the album on their shoulders. Songs that are strong enough lures to attract you to check the album from time to time again because they’re so compelling you’re OK with hearing the rest with them. “Fix You” is the obvious one to point out – it’s an incredibly obvious song admittedly, a model template of a torchlight song if there ever was one, but it taps into what makes such moments successful and feels genuinely liberated and inspired as it explodes – one of few such moments on X&Y which sounds like it just happened rather than was designed to happen. Similarly, stadium rock histrionics are echoed throughout the album but nowhere better than in “White Shadows”, which has a sense of dynamics and urgency that’s missing from its brethren. The Kraftwerk-acknowledging “Talk” is lush and full of wonder, its space age atmospherics mingling with a sense of bliss and wonder. It would be Coldplay’s most underrated single if it wasn’t for “The Hardest Part”: its sparkling guitar melodies, soft organ and genuine sweetness find a moment of human warmth on an otherwise cold album and it charms with such lightness and flair.

Those four songs in particular make it difficult to dismiss X&Y wholly, easy as it is to do. The history books haven’t been kind to the album, especially because its direct successor is Viva la Vida which not only stands as the band’s magnum opus but which was borne as a direction reaction to this. And I admit I may have doodled on the book margins myself, because in hindsight X&Y really does feel like the kind of album that validates all of Coldplay’s stereotypical dismissive traits. But then you go back to it and you realise it’s not actually that bad. In fact, in places it’s really great. Its main issues lie in how it presents itself, how every production board knob has been flicked to the maximum in a desperate quest to be the global success validator it needed to be. But the songs still largely remain effective, the writing being strong enough at places to break through the flaws. Even "Speed of Sound", as much as I brushed it off earlier, has managed to find its way back into my good books because sometimes all you need is that epic brush of sound and on the right day, the way it executes it is just lovely.

Fun fact: the original draft of this review had a lot more negativity. Then I actually decided to do my usual pre-review listen and suddenly had to rush to rewrite the thing with my tail between my legs. My X&Y experience – how I seem to always forget that I actually kind of like it - in a nutshell. Time and time again.

Rating: 7/10