Page 31 - Rolling Stone - India (December 2019)

Reviews Music

COLDPLAY GET REAL
BECK
on Hyperspace, drums in martial-funk time
and speed raps like a digital assistant in a rush. The easy-listening rock kings deepen their politics
But that seesaw of antique blues and modern and globe-trotting sound By WILL HERMES
artifice sums up this album’s perfect storm —
the raw fear of time running out and darkness
closing in, rendered in pop beats and colors. fter their platinum police violence, gun prolifera-
In songs like “Die Waiting” and “Dark Places” 2015 pop move, A tion, and Syria missile strikes.
(the titles tell you plenty), Beck combines the A Head Full of Dreams, Chris Martin even sings con-
exuberant studio mischief of 1996’s Odelay and and a two-year tour that jugations of the word “fuck.”
1999’s Midnite Vultures with the sumptuous shifted $523 million in tickets, He sounds polite doing it, of
introspection of 2002’s Sea Change to eccentric, easy-listening rock champs course. But for a band that’s al-
genuinely compelling effect. Coldplay have made an album ways been judiciously political,
While Beck started as a lone ranger on that aspires to more than this is new territory.
the anti-folk circuit, his records are typically stadium-packing. This is The record’s multicultural-
collaborative affairs. He shared writing credits on positive: When Ed Sheeran ism recalls Viva La Vida, the
Odelay with the Dust Brothers, his co-producers, Coldplay band’s vague 2008 meet-up
and on 2017’s Colors with multi-instrumentalist Everyday Life with art-rock swami Brian
Greg Kurstin. Williams is just as embedded Eno. Here, the music’s both
on Hyperspace as co-producer, co-writer, and Parlophone more eclectic and more uni-
musician on seven tracks. The hip-hop auteur ★★★★★ fied. Instead of just attempting
plays the totally Eighties synth sounds that frame to play Afrobeat, Coldplay
the fleeting satisfaction in “Chemical” (“Found a enlist the Fela Kuti dynasty —
love, just a fantasy/Beautiful and ugly as a night son Femi, grandson Made, and
could be”), and it’s a good bet that Williams is a sample of Fela himself — on
responsible for the otherworldly gauze on Beck’s the swaggering “Arabesque,”
voice in “Uneventful Days,” which is like David while rapper-singer Stromae
Bowie’s Major Tom checking in from distant drops verses in French. “Bani
orbit. Adam” combines Romantic
Beck spreads the work around. Kurstin piano, Persian poetry, and
returns for “See Through” (with weirdly playful West African church music.
vocal choreography suggesting a boy band Yoking it all together is
trapped underwater). Adele veteran Paul longtime Coldplay production
Epworth and producer Cole M.G.N., who wingman Rik Simpson with
worked on the Colors hit “Wow,” chip in too. Martin the Dream Team and Swedish
But Beck, for all of his vigor for partnership, is a pop guru Max Martin. It
solitary classicist, a singer-songwriter wrestling works: What might come off
with the dynamics of desire and emotional as a virtue-signaling kluge
commitment. Hyperspace is grounded in that instead, at its best, transforms
realism. The keyboards in “Chemical” may the band’s faintly imperial
sound like they’re on loan from Vangelis, but universalism into a diverse,
the acoustic jangle and finger-snap percussion collective one.
bring the song to Earth. “Die Waiting” is starlit As ever, Coldplay are good
folk rock with a campfire-siren cameo by Sky becomes your gold standard, it storefront gospel, Nigerian students, sometimes to a fault.
Ferreira, and “Stratosphere” (featuring Coldplay’s would seem time for a rethink. Afrobeat, and Sufi qawwa- The echoes of Bob Marley’s
Chris Martin) is practically garage rock: rough Evoking an Eighties-inscribed li music. There are choirs, “Redemption Song” in
strumming in a plaintive glow. notion of ambition, Everyday orchestral strings, and interpo- “WOTW/POTP,” and of Peter
In “Everlasting Nothing,” Beck is back in space Life is a double LP, Coldplay’s lations of the Janis Joplin Gabriel’s “Biko” in the
with Williams. It’s a finale of echo and choir but a rangiest and deepest release signature “Cry Baby,” and late truth-to-power “Trouble in
blues all the same. “Friends I’ve known/Come by a mile. Scottish indie rocker Scott Town,” come off a bit obvious.
and gone....Still I’ll try/To get back home,” Beck Divided into halves titled Hutchison’s “Los Angeles, Be Yet these still feel more like
promises like a man with one foot in the grave (wait for it) “Sunrise” and Kind.” Strikingly, the lyrics and knowing tributes than rip-offs.
but the other still on the road to another day. . “Sunset,” the band taps into sound bites address racism, The masterstroke is the single
“Orphans,” conjuring a
generation of refugees in a
barroom singalong, with a bass
line recalling Bakithi Kumalo’s
BREAKING pulse on Paul Simon’s
Umi’s Introspective R&B Rapture Graceland, and a reprise so
Umi redolent of the Stones’
SEATTLE-RAISED Japanese-African-American R&B singer Umi was a sophomore “Sympathy for the Devil,” it’s
at USC last year when she started getting attention for songs like “Remember almost a “have your lawyers FROM TOP: BRIAN PATTERSON/SHUTTERSTOCK; HADAS
Me” and “Butterfly,” spare, lilting studies in self-revelation. Now, she’s taking it up call our lawyers” mash note.
another notch, releasing a four-song “visual EP” that will definitely hit home with But Coldplay’s talent has
fans of SZA’s and Solange’s introspective soul. She sings breathily in Japanese over always been their aspirational
plush keyboards on “Sukidakara,” and the carefully sumptuous “Love Affair” renders one-world melodies. Now they
knotty romantic contemplation (“I want to know how to feel, what to feel”) with the slow, sound much more like the real
delicate grace of an artist coming into her own in real time. JON DOLAN world we live in.

33 | Rolling Stone ★★★★★ Classic | ★★★★ Excellent | ★★★ Good | ★★ Fair | ★ Poor RATINGS ARE SUPERVISED BY THE EDITORS OF ROLLING STONE.