Well before Coldplay was to close with its signature hit (the aforementioned "Yellow," from the band's debut album, Parachutes), an unusual buzz surrounded tracks from a record so new that it had yet to spawn its first single. Kids in tiny T-shirts sang along, word for word, with stubble-faced heartthrob Chris Martin's dramatic, hallmark falsetto. By the time Martin launched into the dreamy ballad "In My Place," the crowd seemed to know they were bearing witness to a seminal performance from a previously humble, talented and unfairly pigeonholed band of well-educated Brits who were destined for the heady hinterlands of critical pop acclaim.
Then MTV2's feed went down -- and on that day, MTV2's feed served as president, founder and CEO of Coldplay and its fawning Wicker Park audience. Coldplay was therefore ordered to stop midsong, as if the band was still trying to get the knobs set during sound check rather than actively entertaining an adoring crowd on the edges of their seats. Most frontmen, besotted by ego, would probably tell M2's hipster cronies to go fuck themselves after such an artistically galling moment. But not Martin, who launched into an impromptu, piano-tinged rendition of Nelly's "Hot in Herre," then at the apex of its sweaty-hot popularity on the Billboard charts.
Wouldn't it be perfect if Coldplay, whose Rush is still basking in the critical glow of many a top-ten list and "instant classic" branding, were to cover the lead Lunatic's paean to perspiration-drenched foreplay in the River City? Don't count on it, says Martin, when asked whether he thinks he'll repeat the feat in St. Louis next week.
"Not really, no. It just comes out occasionally," Martin says by phone. "When you're skinny little white boys, you don't feel like you can get away with singing hip-hop. At the moment, what's making us flip out is Missy Elliott's new song ["Work It"]. It's just a way of us showing respect for things we love."
Among the bands Coldplay respects, strives to emulate and gets compared to the most are U2 and Radiohead. It's no surprise, given that Martin cites War and OK Computer as two of his ten all-time-favorite albums. For now, the band has sought to emulate Dublin's finest primarily on the humanitarian front: Martin recently traveled to Haiti to promote fair trade for economically disadvantaged countries. "There are many countries that are just strangled at the moment by America and England," Martin explains. "Free trade means you can just dump your surplus on countries; fair trade means you can't."
Viewed in terms of its sonic and commercial arcs, Rush is most akin to another Radiohead record, the spectacularly underrated The Bends. Months before that release, Radiohead had emerged from virtual obscurity to notch the unexpected megahit "Creep," followed by the inevitable "one-hit-wonder" backlash. Radiohead silenced its critics with 1995's Bends, a lush, rock-solid twelve-song collection that, despite yielding a handful of small-scale hits, best served its listeners as a knockout album.
In an uncannily parallel set of professional circumstances, Coldplay's Rush is precisely to "Yellow" as Bends was to "Creep." But unlike Radiohead's brilliant but annoyingly pretentious lead vocalist, Thom Yorke, the witty, folksy Martin admits to jonesing for the title of "greatest rock band ever," a pedestal openly sought -- and arguably scaled -- by U2. Whereas Yorke and company drift toward an isolated, neo-Icelandic art-rock corner of the music world, one currently occupied by Sigur Rós and Bjork, Martin and his mates would welcome another "Yellow." "Obviously we'd love to have a hit single," says Martin. "When we write every song, we want it to be "Bohemian Rhapsody." But we just wanted to convince people that we're not a flash in the pan."
The band's essentially achieved that goal, even winning over skeptics who instinctively frown on anything less raw than the sort of cacophonous butt-rock favored by the Hives and their overrated peers. There will always be haters -- but Martin has a grumpy epitaph for neither the player nor the game.
"I understand that people hate us," says Martin. "My girlfriend's brother said, 'Just think about the millions of people who hate you.' If the other guy doesn't hit you, you don't train yourself. The more people who criticize us, the more work we have to do."
Such is the attitude one must assume when aspiring to immortality, and, with Rush, Coldplay's certainly in the ballpark. No single song off Rush reaches the hooky, melodramatic heights of Yellow; nor, frankly, is any of the eleven tracks as delicious to the eardrums. But unlike Parachutes, which earned the band a gaggle of industry awards, Rush -- especially on tracks "God Put a Smile Upon Your Face," "Politik" and "Clocks" -- shows that Coldplay sports a respectable power game to go with its ballyhooed finesse.
Still, just as the most important thing to remember about not being married is that you're not married, Coldplay knows it's the power ballad that butters its freshest loaf of creative bread. Weaving cataclysmic guitar charges into otherwise sleepy, introspective ditties such as "The Scientist" and "Warning Sign" (the album's finest track), Coldplay reinvigorates an oft-derided genre, simultaneously and unintentionally improving the street cred of Journey, Styx, REO Speedwagon and the like.
But don't expect Martin to chime in about other musicians' cheesiness. "When there's fucking Exxon Oil and Enron and all that stuff, nobody's particularly bad," he explains. "We could go on a huge rant about the Backstreet Boys, but there's no point. They're not hurting anybody."
