Album Details

• Artist: Coldplay
• Album: Parachutes
• Label: Parlophone
• Year of Release: 2000
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: hstisgod on 2011-07-14

Lightly tasteful tablature stories and fables is the best way to describe the debut album that put Coldplay on the maps of the music industry. 

Just like the reality of a Parachute, this album will seem to be taking its time. Truth is, the combination of musical professionalism and lyrical content is truly going the speed of light. Track three, “Spies", resembles an overcast system hovering over beautiful tropic skies. From one environment to another, using every format of creative instrumental technique to blend into one 5 minute and 18 second song. “ And if we don’t buy here, They’re going to find us, And if we don’t buy now, they’re gonna catch us where we see, And if we don’t hide here, They’re going to find us". Beautifully belting out as the accompanying guitar chords bounce like a child playing hopscotch. 

Floating onward is track four, “Sparks," an amazing romance between the depression of love, and the happiness of rain. “My heart is yours, It's you that I hold onto… Well I promise you this, I'll always look out for you, Yeah well that’s what I'll do.”Progressively slow acoustic chords chaufer this song through its entirety. If this song doesn’t put you and your significant other in the mood for relaxation, nothing will. Skipping over “Yellow” the widely known radio success, we move onto the second largest U.S. single and my personal favorite, track six, “Trouble”. With happiness and success in romance always comes pain. Never free of beautifully luring and almost evil piano fingering, "Trouble" smacks this romantic storybook album in the face. Most framing in my mind is the video. By all means invest the time if given the chance to see this video, which is truly considered artwork. 

Track seven, “Parachutes", simply an intermission, drops in with the already veteran piano intertwined with acoustic guitars, forming a midway lullaby. This intermission turns out to be more than just filler. Hindsight will show you the corridor of lyrical shifting that takes place. 

Track eight "High Speed" features string picking, and a vocal treading that seems to send this musical journey down its new lyrical path. Not so much about love, as much about life. “We’ve been living life, Inside a bubble, Confidence in you, Is confidence in me, Is confidence in high speed”. And now its time to get straight up biased. These lyrics have never rung so true for any one fan. “I wanna live life, never be cruel, I wanna live life, be good to you. I wanna fly, never come down, And live my life, and have friends around”. Track nine, “Change,” materializing through the echoey shadow of the most slowed down acoustic chord imaginable, “So I wanna live, in a wooden house, I wanna live life, always be true, I wanna live life, and be good to you.” Blame, Denial and Regression become lyrically contempt in the final traditionally full length track “Everything’s Not Lost“. This track becomes the simple reminder that long journeys of beauty and circumstance must always be seen with a positive focus.

Simplistic to the point of easy memorization, you would imagine this type of album to get old with each listen. Exactly the opposite, as each listen will seem like your first experience. Similar to an elaborate love note you hold dearly, Parachutes brings all its qualities to a puffy, slowed down, beautiful, scenic view of the madness that is love, life and all the rest. 

User Reviews and Comments

Review:

on 2011-09-27 CharlesMartel Said:

This is the album which set the stage for the later, phenomenally-successful "A Rush of Blood to the Head". Whether Coldplay deserved that phenomenal success is another issue, (NME certainly thought so) but it was this album which set them firmly on the road to it. Because it is earlier and because they were less famous, this album shows the band in a slightly different light. They are still working at their music which has not yet taken on the fully developed form it would with their later work. "Trouble" is the outstanding track with that haunting piano work, but "Shiver" and "Yellow" also figure highly.

Coldplay get a right slagging these days and this is almost entirely due to the hype which surrounds them. This is often unfair but Coldplay to play to it and to that extent, much like U2, deserve the criticism which comes with it. There is also a certain element of the dislike for university-educated types which has been levelled at bands like Radiohead and Genesis a generation before. It also does not help the image when Chris Martin marries a Hollywood actress and calls his kids by the sort of ridiculous names which only the mega-wealthy celebrity types think is cool to burden their poor kids with.

Coldplay sprang from a long tradition of British indie music but sanitised and packaged it to appear less threatening to the mainstream mass. That is the essence of their success, and of the derogatory sentiments they attract. It has long been a trait, particularly in Britain, of deriding those who become successful as having somehow sold out. Underdogs are often favoured until they succeed and therefore cease to become underdogs. Then they are hated. It happens with footballers and artists of various sorts. Coldplay are not going to be immune from it.

However, when you actually sit down and listen there is some real quality to the bands earlier work and it would be shame to miss out on it just because the New Musical Express thinks the sun shines out of Chris Martin's arse. There can be little doubt that musicians who comprise Coldplay are talented and that many of the songs they write are catchy and melodic. But such is the divisiveness which the band seems capable of generating that those who love them do so for the same reason that those who hate them do so. It is a situation which Coldplay cannot win. I suppose at the end of the day, it is easy on the ear and hardly complex enough to put off those for whom music is just something you listen to, on the way to work, or sitting down while reading a book. The world needs music like that.

Yet for some reason I personally find this lacking somewhat. I find that it lacks the power to move me in any substantial way and this is a problem. It has been described to me as the ultimate in chill-out music and I think that is an apt description. It is not the main event, but a sort of afterthought. The music may be beautiful and soothing but it doesn't mean much to me, and for that reason it ultimately fails as a musical experience. At best it is a soundtrack to a rather inactive part of life, but that is rather damning with faint praise. In many ways, I suppose it is like the Yes or Mike Oldfield of its generation - beautifully crafted but irrelevant to me and who I am.
Rating: 6/10