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I just finished reading
Pitchforkmedia.com’s
review of Coldplay’s latest, a live CD/DVD combo documenting their tour
this past year. Pitchfork, a notoriously hipster-centric site less prone
to embracing bands who liked Fake Plastic Trees than to salivate
over ones who preferred, say, Climbing Up the Walls, treats the
idea of liking Coldplay like a book report: you drag your feet, trying
valiantly not to do it, but there you are at class time, standing and
delivering.
I will readily admit: I like Coldplay. Granted, I tend to like a lot of
the bands dubbed “baby Radioheads,” from Travis to Toploader, but Coldplay
occupies a different position in that there is no pretense in their
delivery. They’ve been accused of being the “feeling man’s rock band,” and
damn if that doesn’t nail it. In this sense, they’re the negative of
Radiohead. When your heart breaks in front of Thom Yorke, he offers you
knives and isolation; when it breaks with Chris Martin, you are given
solidarity and blankets. Bands like Travis and Starsailor have the pose
right; however, they lack the heart that Coldplay brings to the table.
Empathy isn’t cool, apparently, within the rock community. Bands like The
Strokes trade on an ironic detachment, holding their audience at bay;
rather, Coldplay’s music draws the listener in, trading the leather jacket
for a favorite bathrobe and cocoa. It's just cooler to wear the leather
jacket and old-school Chuck Taylors than it is to wear an ironed shirt and
sensible shoes with proper arch support.
This isn’t slowing the band down in their quest to hug the world. Their
earnest, “real guy” members have won themselves a pass into the A-list,
being proclaimed by Justin “The One” Timberlake as "the best band in the
world" and their real-guy earnestness shines through in their involvement
in humanitarian efforts like Oxfam and Make Trade Fair.
It all calls to mind another “feeling man’s band”: at Live Aid, a
performer fronting an up-and-coming band leaped into the breach between
the stage and the audience. As he waded into the crowd, he embraced a
sobbing young woman. She wept, and as the final phrases of “Bad”
passed his lips, Bono shed tears as well.
Coldplay aren’t another baby Radiohead. What they are is a continuation of
the populist connection U2 forged nearly twenty years ago. They’re wide
awake. |
