20 years ago today: Coldplay released X&Y

Originally published in Hot Press in 2005:

Do you want the good or the bad news first? Here’s the bad news: Christmas came and went, the goose got fat and the bean counters at EMI got plain tetchy. Paralysed by self-doubt and pressure, Coldplay set in motion the album that was to make or break them. How impressive and honorable, then, that this is their most hearty, ambitious and effortlessly striking work to date. But as we all know, nothing good ever comes easy.

They may have wiped millions of EMI’s share price, but the powers that be didn’t seem to realise that keeping the parched masses waiting is priceless in marketing terms.

At the risk of sounding frightfully predictable, X&Y was only ever going to be one of two things: Coldplay’s OK Computer or their Joshua Tree; the album where they embraced their stadium-bound fate, or turned the stylistic tables to show everyone who’s in control here.

Effectively, Coldplay have mastered a beguiling mix of supreme confidence and swagger with polite, gentlemanly earnestness. They have never been a cocky, self-promoting band, and it has been both their strength and their weakness. Correspondingly, X&Y is very much an album of two halves.

Part of the album is unexpectedly meaty, moving stealthily with what can only be called a soft stomp. Chris Martin’s piano keys have served him well in the past, and his emotional and vocal range doesn’t go unnoticed, but X&Y is essentially Buckland’s moment in the sun.

‘Square One’ boasts an electrified, New Order-ish thrust, giving it the urgency and energy of early U2 material. ‘Low’, another unexpected surprise, is immediate and strikingly taut, a song that unearths new textures with every listening, while ‘Talk’, with a Kraftwerk sample used to amusing effect, is fuelled by Buckland’s monstrous riffery.

On the flipside, there is much noble romanticism to be admired here. The celestial ‘Fix You’ with its sky-scraping, gospel like reverie, stands out on first listen, as does ‘What If’, a majestic, if slightly tentative number. ‘Swallowed By The Sea’ is quintessential Coldplay; utterly breathtaking in its simplicity.

Effectively, X&Y is Coldplay’s outdoor arena album; the perfect soundtrack to a place of love, peace and unity, where no-one minds if the beer is warm. They’ve done it again, these accidental, reluctant, unlikely superstars.