|
A Rush of Blood to the HeadBeating TimeA RUSH OF BLOOD TO THE HEAD With the release of their debut album Parachutes, Coldplay were acclaimed as the new Radiohead. With the old one having apparently lost the rock music plot, Coldplay's second album with its stunning guitar riffs and achingly beautiful keyboard soundscapes confirms their reputation as the new poets of gloom and malcontent. And no song more so than the massive single 'In My Place'. The latest example of the paradoxical popularity of anthems of sadness is full of melancholic foreboding. The guitar lead-in gives us a singalong tune, but its looping repetition only serves to signal the sense of being helplessly trapped that pervades the song. 'In my place ... were lines that I couldn't change / I was lost / ƒ I was scared / tired and underprepared / but I'll wait for it.' The heartfelt begging for rescue, 'please, please, please / come back and sing to me, to me, me', is deeply personal but the song offers us no hope that it will be answered and we are left utterly alone to face whatever is coming. Interlude from the gloomThere's a brief interlude from the gloom. It comes in a moment of epiphany: 'I am nothing / in the dark / and the clouds burst / to show daylight' ('Daylight'). The snaking, sliding guitar sounds sound almost Indian and the endlessly repeated last line, 'slowly breaking through the daylight', has a chantlike quality. 'Green Eyes' also tells a tale of a transforming encounter. 'I came here with a load / and it feels so much lighter now I met you.' Sparse guitar strumming gives way to jangly, jaunty celebration. But the depression soon resurfaces. 'Warning Sign' lets slip the admission that 'You were an island and I passed you by' and 'A Whisper' faces the harsh reality that the unending rhythms of life will drown out all our individual voices leaving their questions unanswered and their confusion unresolved. But there is hope even here. 'Amsterdam' begins, 'Oh my star is fading'. It's a song for those 'stood on the edge, tied to a noose' thinking of those for whom 'time is on your side'. They are the ones who 'came along and cut me loose' giving new hope to those 'stuck here in this hole'. Life goes on and we continue our journey through it. But our confusions are perpetuated 'when you work out where to draw the line / your guess is as good as mine'. Every human has an idea, a saying or a word of instruction to be shared amongst us all. 'Give me strength, reserve, control ... / tell me your own politik', asks 'Politik'. Because when none of us has the solutions for all moments, I rely on others to have the solution to my problem of this moment. But nowhere does A Rush of Blood to the Head offer us a comprehensive solution to all of life, the very possibility seems excluded by its absence and we are left to stagger from one crisis to the next. Maybe such bleakness is popular because it strikes a chord with people. Do our lives have to be like this? Simon Wheeler© Evangelicals Now - February 2003 |