When
Coldplay
sampled
Kraftwerk
on their third album,
X&Y
, it was a signifier for the British band, telegraphing their classicist good taste while signaling how they prefer the eternally hip to the truly adventurous; it was stylish window dressing for soft arena rock. Hiring
Brian Eno
to produce the bulk of their fourth album,
Viva la Vida
, is another matter entirely.
Eno
pushes them, not necessarily to experiment but rather to focus and refine, to not leave their comfort zone but to find some tremulous discomfort within it. In his hands, this most staid of bands looks to shake things up, albeit politely, but such good manners are so inherent to
's DNA that they remain courteous even when they experiment. With his big-budget production,
has a knack for amplifying an artist's personality, as he allows bands to be just as risky as they want to be -- which is quite a lot in the case of
U2
and
James
and even
Paul Simon
, but not quite so much with
. And yet this gentle encouragement -- he's almost a kindly uncle giving his nephews permission to rummage through his study -- pays great dividends for
, as it winds up changing the specifics without altering the core. They wind up with the same self-styled grandiosity; they've just found a more interesting way to get to the same point.
Gone are
Chris Martin
's piano recitals and gone are the washes of meticulously majestic guitar, replaced by orchestrations of sound, sometimes literally consisting of strings but usually a tapestry of synthesizers, percussion, organs, electronics, and guitars that avoid playing riffs. Gone too are simpering schoolboy ballads like
"Fix You,"
and along with them the soaring melodies designed to fill arenas. In fact, there are no insistent hooks to be found anywhere on
, and there are no clear singles in this collection of insinuatingly ingratiating songs. This reliance on elliptical melodies isn't off-putting -- alienation is alien to
-- and this is where
's guidance pays off, as he helps sculpt
to work as a musical whole, where there are long stretches of instrumentals and where only
"Strawberry Swing,"
with its light, gently infectious melody and insistent rhythmic pulse, breaks from the album's appealingly meditative murk. Whatever iciness there is to the sound of
is warmed by
Martin
's voice, but the music is by design an heir to the earnest British art rock of '80s
Peter Gabriel
-- arty enough to convey sober intelligence without seeming snobby, the kind of album that deserves to take its title from
Frida Kahlo
and album art from
Eugene Delacroix
. That
Delacroix
painting depicts the French Revolution, so it does fit that
tones down his relentless self-obsession -- the songs aren't heavy on lyrics and some are shockingly written in character -- which is a development as welcome as the expanded sonic palette.
's refined writing topics may be outpaced by the band's guided adventure, but they're both indicative that
are desperate to not just strive for the title of great band -- a title they seem to believe that they're to the manor born -- but to actually burrow into the explorative work of creating music. And so the greatest thing
may have learned from
is his work ethic, as they demonstrate a focused concentration throughout this tight album -- it's only 47 minutes yet covers more ground than
and arguably
A Rush of Blood to the Head
-- that turns
into something quietly satisfying. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine