On a recent trip to Barnes & Noble to spend a gift card (thanks Phillip and Deana) I walked away with Muse’s Black Holes & Revelations, Coldplay’s Viva la Vida, and a reprint of the classic mid 80s comeback album from Yes, 90125. While standing in line for the register it occurs to me that they’re all British bands. The British Invasion ushered in by The Beatles and carried on by The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Queen, David Bowie, The Clash, and many others is apparently alive and well, at least in my preferences.
Of course, with the Muse release being from 2006 and Coldplay’s newest issued many months ago, I’m a more than a little late to the game to be talking about it by the normal rules of internet commentary. But I’m figuring a few friends and readers might not have either album and be as unfashionably late as I am.
Muse
The Muse purchase was made after I’d heard enough friends talking about them in some form or another, and after the single Supermassive Black Hole had stuck with me even after last hearing it on XM many months ago. It’s an interesting mix. The same kind of new-wave/glam/punk that The Killers and Franz Ferdinand manage to pull off very well, some of Radiohead’s trademark experimentation, and a nod to their inherited musical DNA: listen to the vocals of Supermassive Black Hole back-to-back with The Rolling Stone’s Emotional Rescue and tell me lead singer Matthew Bellamy isn’t channeling Mick Jagger’s mojo. They even manage to step on Metallica’s turf with the crunchy, riff-driven Assassin.
Where Black Holes & Revelations falls flat for me is on a few inexplicable slow tunes that seem out of place with this band’s dynamic. Not that aggressive or experimental bands can’t pull this off -witness the slower tracks on any Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails cd- but when you’re gonna do a song like this the production has to match. The slow-starting, mournful, judgement-day-is-coming intro of Take A Bow works because it plays to the band’s strengths. It starts off sounding like gradually approaching doom and builds to a crescendo, coming across like the soundtrack to Apocalypse Now if David Lynch had directed it. But while I can appreciate the technique of Soldier’s Poem with the spot-on imitation of Queen’s multi-layered vocal harmonies, somehow the end result isn’t believable. The following track, Invincible, almost manages to pull it off when the band finds its groove, but lapses again into rock ballad territory, which is of course a Cardinal Sin.
(Author’s disclaimer of blatant bias- I hate rock ballads. If it were in the dictionary it should say something like this-
Rock Ballad, n.
1. A really bad idea.
2. Was this so your parents would like the album?
3. You’re doing it wrong.
It’s not that slow is bad. Consider: The Beatles- Something, The Rolling Stones- Angie, Radiohead- A Wolf At The Door, Nine Inch Nails- Something I Can Never Have. In each case it works because the production matches. Something is little more than George Harrison singing over guitar. Don’t try to make a slow song sound big. I still don’t like Coldplay’s Fix You for the same reason. But Til Kingdom Come, the tune they wrote for Johnny Cash that got put at the end of X & Y as a surprise track? Bingo.)
My anti-ballad bias aside, this is a worthy album. Map of the Problematique is probably my favorite track, borrowing from all the influences that real music critics have ascribed to them while still sounding unique. The band is skilled, and Bellamy’s vocals are powerful. He can pull off the kind of bombast and drama that My Chemical Romance tries to do, but without inducing giggles in anyone older than 16. Cheer up emo kids, there’s a better band waiting for you after you hit puberty.
Coldplay
Coldplay’s Viva la Vida is perhaps best known for bring produced by Brian Eno, as if Coldplay’s own name didn’t carry enough weight. It departs from the almost-too-big sound of X & Y, and is more reminiscent of A Rush of Blood to the Head, but with Eno’s trademark production it adds new depth and atmosphere while still bringing out the band’s own sound. They’ve been accused of copying compared to U2, and one might think that getting produced by Eno means they’re simply copying what he did on The Unforgettable Fire and subsequent releases. But where that work brought a luminous, ethereal quality much like Eno’s own work with David Byrne on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, in this case it brings clarity. Besides, almost every Brit-pop and new wave band since the Talking Heads gets produced by Eno. I think it’s a law or something.
One area where I’ll disagree with a lot the critics is in how different this album is simply because Chris Martin’s trademark falsetto is gone. While it’s true that his falsetto is not present here, it’s not that different unless you are only looking as far back as X & Y. A Rush of Blood to the Head had a number of tracks that featured Martin’s natural voice working in the same ranges, in particular the title track and my favorite, God Put a Smile Upon Your Face. Martin in a higher register does not equal Martin in a falsetto.
For anyone who didn’t like the direction that X & Y went (yes, there are a few, I’ve even met them!), Viva la Vida is a return to form but by no means a step back. I think this will be one of those releases were the depth is revealed the more you listen to it.
(My apologies at the length so far. I didn’t know what I was getting into. I promise, no more posts about three albums at once!)
Yes
As a rule, when writing about something old, it has to be old enough. While it may be so last week to be discussing the two albums above, retro and vintage seem to be permanently in, so I can safely talk about 90125, the 1983 release from Yes. I wasn’t even looking for this one, so it’s one of those happy unexpected finds. This copy exists thanks to Rhino Records. If you haven’t heard of them, they tend to buy up the rights to once-top-selling albums that are out of print, remaster them from the source tapes, add a few extras such as unreleased tracks, faithfully reproduce the cover art and include a bit about the history of the band. They’ve also republished several other albums from the Yes catalog.
When 90125 was released, it was almost under the band name of Cinema. Trevor Rabin, the multi-instrumentalist and singer who had energized the collection of former Yes members with fresh blood and fresh ideas, decided that he didn’t want to have to sing along with his other duties in the band, so they brought back Jon Anderson who had sung with Yes before. At this point, the majority of the band were ex-Yes members, so the name officially changed. 90125 was released by the 8th(!) version of Yes.
Just like 70s era Rush, early Yes releases were exercises in epic-length tracks and albums full of signature progressive rock- overt musical showmanship, intricate melodies and odd time signatures (just so we’re clear, I have no problem with any of that). But just as Rush became more concise and focused on Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures, so did Yes on 90125. The result is progressive rock served up with an icy crisp minimalism, and outstanding production values.
The remastering doesn’t have quite as much bottom end as I would like, but that was typical of recordings of the day and doesn’t really detract. It’s also to be expected, considering that thumping bass was never the Yes style, and the recording would have been adjusted around Jon Anderson’s stratospheric vocals. Listened to over a set of Sennheiser or Grado headphones connected to a worthy amp, the results are pure bliss. In the early 80’s, some studios hadn’t quite figured out how to properly master for digital, and the results weren’t always good. You’d heard the noise floor of the original master tapes, or it might be too harsh or flat, and you’d end up with a CD that sounded worse than a cassette. I have it on good authority that the first CD release of Toto IV was a major disappointment. That isn’t the case here- Owner of Lonely Heart sounds as tight and punchy as ever (I swear I’ll never tire of that song) and the vocal harmonies on Leave It elicit a head-shaking grin, especially if you listen to the A Capella version added to this release. The entire album shows off their musicianship with turn-on-a-dime tempo changes, time signatures that keep the rhythm section very busy, and impressive minor-key vocal harmonies. I hesitate to toss around the word ‘masterpiece’, but in this case it fits. This new copy of an old favorite has spent more time in my CD player than the Muse or Coldplay releases.
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The moral of this story? Elvis is the King of Rock-n-Roll, but The Beatles soon took over and the Brits have had pretty much ruled ever since.
God Save the Queen.
