Track Review: Coldplay - "Violet Hill"

Rating: 3.3 / 5.0

In a lot of ways, this track is a step forward for Coldplay, to be sure and fair. The production has jettisoned the alienating sterility of prior releases, and Brian Eno has replaced it with a noisy, almost proggy style that smacks of something like Explosions in the Sky, enveloping Martin's gentle whine in a sea of more-distorted-than-ever guitars and huge cymbals. Production carries this song rather than the songwriting itself (which I think was a wise choice); the drama of the song is in whatever dynamism it can muster (briefly, going from loud to louder and then from louder to reallyreallyreally soft at the end) rather than in any inherent structural quality. But that's just my indie snobbery coming in. Props to the band; joking apart, there's been progress since the debacle that was X&Y.

But it's important to keep in mind that this is a step forward...for Coldplay. It's a predictable and uncertain step, a step into the uncharted territory that Coldplay always seemed to want to pioneer but was never quite up to. It sounds as though the band is fighting for vitality outside of the arena-rock...arena; they seem to want to have their name spoken in the same breath not as U2, but as Radiohead. Problem is, there are still the typical Coldplay-isms here: most obviously the heart-on-sleeve lyrics and the stripped-bare piano based final chorus where Chris Martin takes it down an octave to make things intimate/show his range. So while they may be after vitality and an honour I'm not sure they will ever have (or that they even deserve), but they've made an honest effort here. Unlike their last single ("Speed of Sound"), this track implies that the album to come will maybe take some risks. Whether they will be up to delivering remains to be seen. We'll be watching, of course.

-PTC