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This is a complex, well driven, deep album.Something that leaves you with a longlasting impression of harmony that gives
shape and definitions to the inner doubts these years are shadowing, but also blinding and uplifting all of us with.
It
doesn't sound as immediate as the luminous debut "Parachutes", and it gives less to radio tunes brevity in most of the songs
than "A Rush Of blood To The Head" did.
But you can find nonetheless radio tunes, no matter the lenght of the sounding perceptions this time.
You can find rock, gospel, the typical british attitude to alternative pop, the bending to the progressive hymns to guitar
as well as the acoustic sound of a piano that catches love troubles and declarations in so simple way you will get mesmerized.
But it's what I was expecting from them, and they were right in attempting to the symphony rock so Floydesque now.
There's the usual "spleen diversity" in all of their songs, but listen to them with heart open and not only ears, and
you will be certainly surprised: as in all of Chris's doubting and questioning, you perceive clear some that has much more
to do with hope and faith in humans instead than despare and enclosure.
Coldplay are analyzing the society in terms of unawareness, while around us all seems to make us confide that we belong
to the society of certainity.
The tao of life, which is already in the title of the record, this series of contrapositions that don't necessarily have
to fight with one another, that is the trademark announced and blessed of this record, is so incredibly near to my own vision
about life that while listening to the melodies I was shocked more than once.
But hey! I can't write songs nor melodies... so it must have been Coldplay's music after all, not my own feelings decoded
in music.
Still... the chemistry is impressive.
My intention now would be, should be to start with the tracklist and try to suggest you a sort of introduction to decoding
the spirit of each song.
That was honestly what I had in mind before the actual listen of the album.
I am a Coldplay's admirer since their very first start, I have always succeded in the journey along their messages to
music universe.
But I find difficulties this time: each song is a little symphony.
It deserves a personal involvement and that's hard to be suggested by someone else.
Some could hint that the symphonic elapsing risks to mispell the pure quality of the tunes (in terms of balance and rythmical
melodies) blending it all into cold technique: after the mere first listening to the album, I too feared that the massive
sound the band wanted to achieve was going to water down the primordial intensity of the messages in the song and make them
vanish in beautiful, but empty sounding.
The second listening luckely canceled that fear: every new step into this record makes me accept what's in it like warm
acquiescing of the soul (that keeps willing to fire and burst, exactly more and more, at every new listening. A tao, again
and naturally, coming from such a record).
Maybe only the song "A Message" the simplest, but as well one of the truest in the whole record, doesn't
reach the symphonic status.
And it's not a missing, cos that's such a sweet, naked, open admission of total love (and scare for it, and scare for
the mistakes and pain love can cause, both to the one and to the other involved, when misunderstanding comes) it would have
been out of place to make it collide with orpels and useless tricks.
True love is simple, in his only reason to exist.
and here we come again at the core of the entire album, at the core of its style and charme onto me, and I can just hope
(for you dears) on you as well.
This is the record of the opposite that merge to create the complexity that scares (Talk) but that also
conquers, with all its surprises, all of its chances, all of its ways to make you wonder and guess around your own living,
and the one of those around you (doesn't matter if those around you are the only ones you do love, or people you've never
spoken with).
And along Chris's adorable singing, with all of his chirping heart of a loving man, that still so bound to world he bleeds
when he sees disgraces and hate, I said, along to his words that never sounded better, the band has created lines of note
dances that impress widely my euphonic ear, trained by the likes of Italian Classic music and the typical melodic style our
popular music tends to predilige.
It's like the pauses, the sudden rushing, the breaks and the delicate swhirling of the instruments have to guide the
heart of the listeners just INSIDE Chris's paintings of human lives.
Yes, the instruments here talk with us all, to make easier for us get into the spirit of the record, which is uniquely
strong, cos it's definitely something heartfelt by the creators of it.
They said maybe why it took them so long to complete this third work of themselves.
The point is, what they have made out of our waiting, is a rare pearl of consistency in music, something that is truly
artistic.
The biggest element of praise, must be that in all this "refined art" they never sound studied to the successful "trendy
tricks" that make refined pop sounding pretentious.
In their "tao record", they truly sound tao-ish: quiet, but exploding.
Speaking of their own private stuff, yet so near to whomever (and people of my age are "whomever") has lived the natural
road of life around their 30s.
Scared, but hopeful no matter what, hopeful that men, being men, can solve all the shit they have actually created.
Screaming, yet kissing the sky.
Roaring guitars, but soaking into a sea of tickling violins and ethereal choruses.
And I repeat: all this sounds perfect in its own place.
Another order of the elements would have ruined everything.
Maybe all the time they had to take for this album, was worthy to create the puzzle that sounds so massive, yet so natural
and "minimalistically Coldplaysh".
You can like or dislike the laid-back kind of excitement the discover of this record suggests.
You might be a screaming giant that loves to jump up and downs at rock gigs... but I am so as well, and still, I can
find Coldplay and their music so real and pure I figure out is just a matter of intensity of will in getting happy and lost
in their research of musical landscapes.
They haven't invented anything new, cos the word "new" has ceased to have sense in pop/rock music decades ago.
But they play marvellously and they are "elegant" in what they do.
The word "elegant" comes from Latin word "eligo", that means "to choose": by ancient times, what was distinguishing a
great, smart, noble man from the outcast and the bad people was his talent in choosing things, from companies, to style of
speaking, from tones of voices till the politician that would have done better for the Great Eternal Rome.
Well, Coldplay might have invented nothing new, but they surely can choose what is valuable to be put together, studied,
re-elaborated, and merged into something, that if it's not new, can be surely named "their own".
Coldplay have created a working chemistry that produces pop art.
Not of the kind that will fade in 15 minutes: the one of the kind that can be remembered at least for 15 years.
And multiplied ad libitum.
Give it a try to this record.
Don't do it for being part of any cool trend, don't do it cos Gwyneth would appreciate, don't do it cos Chris is so cute
and nice he supports the fair trade (well, that's really a noble and high action, btw, that has to be said): do it cos honestly,
you will find the most special record of the year.
And this, even if (like me) you do use to love Slim Shady's stuf, too.
Rate: 9 out of 10
By your editor, gallimel
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