Album Review: Coldplay- Ghost Stories

I don’t think at any point in the band’s decade plus history, that it’s ever been considered “cool” to like Coldplay. And I don’t really know how many people would openly ever call themselves a fan of the band—though can we all just admit that at one time or another, we all probably liked at least one song by Coldplay?

I don’t really fuck with Coldplay but yeah, I fucked with a few of their songs back in the day. And if we’re being hunnest here, Parachutes is a pretty decent record, even with the overplayed singles weighing it down. It’s a nice slice of post-Radiohead Brit Pop, coming at a time when every young British guitar-driven band was trying to be “the next Radiohead.”

And was “Viva la Vida” a total guilty pleasure for me back in the summer of 2008? Sure it was. And do my wife and I tear up when “Fix You” is used in some kind of manipulative fashion—like the season finale of “Derek” or in a video of adoptable animals, put together by our local Humane Society? Yes. I mean it’s that kind of song so how can you not cry, unless you’re some kind of robot without an emotion chip.

So it’s been probably like twelve years or more since I’ve sat down with any Coldplay album and listened to it from start to finish, and today I find myself holed up in the back corner table of this Caribou Coffee, attempting to listen to the band’s sixth LP, Ghost Stories.

Overshadowing the release of this album, and really, overshadowing the band itself at this point, is frontman Chris Martin’s crumbling marriage to actress Gwyneth Paltrow. And yes, I’ve made a lot of jokes on Twitter about how this album should have been scrapped in the wake of their very public “conscious uncoupling,” and instead, they should have recorded a record full of Gwyneth diss tracks.

You’ll be disappointed to learn that there are no diss tracks to be found on Ghost Stories. Instead, it’s an album that was written and recorded during the slow dissolution of relationship that couldn’t escape the public eye. And rather than making a “divorce” record like Marvin Gaye’s angry Here, My Dear, lyrically, Ghost Stories comes off like excerpts from Chris Martin’s Live Journal account—example: “I just got broken, broken into two,” he sings on “Magic.”

Later on “True Love,” he pleads, “Tell me that you love me. If you don’t, then lie to me.” I mean, I would stop short of saying that it’s a “cry for help” kind or record, but very early on, it’s painfully apparent who left whom.

I don’t really know when Coldplay stopped sounding like a band, and started sounding like Chris Martin with a drum machine and a few keyboards, but that’s pretty much what Ghost Stories amounts to—the Bon Iver-aping “Midnight” is a prime example of this. There are very few moments where you are reminded that this is the work of four people. One of those songs didn’t even make the final cut of the album, and shows up in the form of “Ghost Story,” one of the extra tracks tacked onto the “deluxe edition” of the record.

Upon my initial listens to Ghost Stories, I was going to say that there are like no obvious “big” songs on this album. Coldplay, for the most part, are a singles driven band, and those singles are always very bombastic and grandiose. There are some subtle “pop” elements that are start to reveal themselves over time, specifically in the album’s second track, “Magic,” though it isn’t obvious, and the song itself is actually rather reserved sounding. The only actual “big” moment arrives late in the album, in the form of “A Sky Full of Stars,” an incredibly earnest, driving anthem that takes an odd turn by opting for huge sounding “club” drums when it’s time for the percussion to kick in.

Like honestly, Coldplay’s drummer (turns out he has a name, Will Champion) seems to be cashing the easiest paycheck in music right now—Ghost Stories is incredibly beat heavy, with very few songs including what sounds to be “real” drums. So good for Will Champion, being able to program some shit on a drum machine and press play while Chris Martin emotes over the top of it.

On “Ink,” the band steers head first into Top 40 pop music, crafting such an insipid song, it wouldn’t sound out of place sandwiched in between Maroon 5 and Katy Perry on a mainstream friendly radio station. A similar trick is pulled shortly after that on “Another’s Arms,” a song that boasts some questionable faux-R&B “slow jam” beats, and has even more questionable lyrics—“my body on your body,” Martin deadpans.

The real problem with Ghost Stories is that it isn’t interesting. It, like many records, just kind of happens in front of you as you listen, never really going out of their way to grab your attention. It begins, and then it ends, and in the middle there, it seems like it should do something to captivate you. It’s the kind of record that sounds like it cost a small fortune to make—and it took three people (plus the band themselves) to produce this record, over the course of two years. And because of the time and labor put in, as well as the fact that it’s about such personal subject matter, you’d think it would be a really emotionally gripping effort.

But it’s not. There is little-to-no depth to be found, and instead, it’s just incredibly bland music, dressed up a little here and there to make it slightly more appealing to someone—but who that person is, I have no idea. 

If this is your kind of thing, Ghost Stories drops on Tuesday in the states via Atlantic Records, and elsewhere via Parlophone.