Coldplay, “Parachutes”
Review by Jack Bullion

A band like Radiohead has made life terribly unfair for a majority of popular British rock bands today. If any group so much as dares to play frustrated, melancholic dream-rock, they get slapped with the poser label for even daring to remind people of the brilliant Oxford quintet. But, given that Radiohead has gone gloriously off the deep end and now sounds nothing like they used to, such a label isn’t really fair. On top of that, Coldplay’s “Parachutes,” while an obvious nod to a great band, manages to stand on its own as a regal accomplishment.

From the soft, acoustic guitar interplay of the album’s opener “Don’t Panic” to the final, sonorous notes of a piano on “Everything’s Not Lost,” “Parachutes” presents itself as an organic, hypnotic album that is infinitely more durable than its short 40-minute running time might suggest. Each of its 10 songs are a mini-epic of almost staggering emotional, pathetic power, anchored by singer Chris Martin’s unique voice. Martin sings verses in a dry warble that sounds like Dave Matthews with a tennis ball in his mouth, but when the chorus hits, he shifts effortlessly into a piercing wail that rivals Bono’s and, yes, Thom Yorke’s in terms of its aural impact.

Most of the time, Martin’s voice trips along with the ping-ponging electric guitars, careening off arpeggios in the thunderous “Shiver” and bristling in deep paranoia amidst the cascades of “Spies.” On their current radio hit “Yellow,” Martin even manages to twist a cliché line like “For you I’d bleed myself dry” into something that sounds like the most beautiful, romantic line ever uttered in a rock song. The closer, “Everything’s Not Lost,” is an anthem that practically dares you not to pull out your lighter and wave it around. And, as that song fades out in a beautiful coda, the impression “Parachutes” leaves you with is that everything is, indeed, not lost. Not when musicians can still make a gentle juggernaut of an album of like this one.

Jack Bullion is a junior English major from Columbia, Mo.
He can be reached at (j.w.bullion@student.tcu.edu).