I am still listening to the new Coldplay album, and liking it more and more, and not just because everyone keeps telling me how terrible it is. There is perversity in all enthusiasm, for sure, but the unanimity of critical disapproval in this case seems to have mixed with popular ennui to create a bracing cocktail of contempt and contumely. It just makes me want to play the damn thing even louder. Ghost Stories (Parlophone) is the Millwall of break-up albums. If you don’t like it, it doesn’t care.
Maybe it’s because break-up albums are supposed to be dogged, downbeat affairs, recorded in one take in some grotty old studio with a 1950s mixing desk and the door hanging off its hinges. But this one is luscious, expensively recorded and clear as a bell. In fact, it’s one of the cleanest albums I think I have ever heard. You could eat your dinner off some of these orchestral arrangements. And when, after half an hour of moping, we launch into the joyous dance-pop of ‘A Sky Full Of Stars’, which has been remixed by Giorgio Moroder but needn’t have been because it sounds so much like him anyway, the clarity is almost breathtaking. In years to come, this record will be used as a demonstration disc by hi-fi salespeople, just as the intro for Dire Straits’ ‘Money For Nothing’ always used to be. Lots of people hated that, too.
Cleanness in pop music has long had a poor press. Most listeners prefer a bit of grit in the oyster, and a sizeable minority will take the grit and throw the oyster away altogether. And yet, every improvement in recording technology has made clean music more feasible and easier to make.
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