A Rush of Blood to the Head
...And so it is that the music press find their rising starlets, their media darlings who, so long as the fat cheques arrive at their doorsteps, will record a second album that will receive neither attention nor appraisal. Hundreds of them have passed, with many more to follow: "THE NEXT BIG THING", they will be dubbed, and like those before them they will tour too much and work to hard (or too little), and their careers will end fairly abruptly soon after.
But what of those who keep their eyes in the right places? The ones who, regardless of the attention record another handful of songs with seemingly no pretentions of grandeur and world domination, and perhaps more importantly, no tabloid-reported incidents of how the drummer is carried to hospital with four models/prostitutes on their arm (depending on genre of music, obviously) after a heroin overdose from the habit he picked up on the previous album tour? What happens to the ones like these?
It comes as little surprise that Coldplay, a nice-guy image band who, after recording their decent, above-average first album (Parachutes) and promptly acquiring next-big-thing status, proceed to not buy into the hype and take up smack, but instead record a better, more serious, more developed album that will undoubtdedly find a wider audience than its predecessor.
The production is quite inoffensive, everyting has that slightly distant quality to it (otherwise known as 'reverb'), the singles are quite polished - 'In my place' as the most obvious standout single contender, so much so that it almost doesn't fit on the album; and the only below-par track contained within (Whisper) will find its fans without too much trouble. I've heard friends say the album is "shit compared to Parachutes" so perhaps its not the best idea to go in expecting anything that obvious, but otherwise, I'd guess its safe to say the press were somewhere near close to the target with the 'next-big-thing-isms'. Just try not to think of this as their 'Bends' or anything like that. They've seperated themselves from Radiohead's Electronic tendencies with Rush of Blood, and sound all the better for it.
8.2
MD 20:10 29/03/03