Coldplay - Mylo Xyloto [Parlophone]

4.4

One thing that was so prominent with Coldplay’s 2008 effort Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends was the ambiguity of it. Tracks like “42” and “Death and All His Friends” made Viva La Vida one of my cherished albums that lived up to all the hype. As my music tastes and preferences changed rapidly from 2008 to 2011, Coldplay was left in the dust and I ashamedly found myself barely even caring that Coldplay’s fifth LP Mylo Xyloto was being released within a couple of days. Leading single “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall” possibly signified the ultimate deciding factor of whether Mylo Xyloto had any hope to be as transcendent as Viva La Vida was. It failed, quite miserably.

Taking the opposite direction that Viva La Vida was dropped out with (the darker and more textured feel) Mylo Xyloto is more colorful and less brooding than its predecessor. One thing immediately present through just a simple listen of Mylo Xyloto is the lack of transition between songs. All past Coldplay efforts have had a consistent theme and dynamic to fall back on; A Rush of Blood To the Head—that glorious piano rock that skyrocketed Coldplay to fame; X&Y—spacey electronics; Viva La Vida—the beautifully orchestrated and baroque-quality music. However, Mylo Xyloto jumps around into random intervals. From the hushed acoustic guitar backed with lush orchestrations on “U.F.O.” to the Rihanna featured “Princess of China” which sounds like a pop song; the two are even right next to each other, I even checked if my iTunes was on shuffle when “Princess of China” started.

The traditional piano rock A Rush of Blood to the Head and Parachutes are known for is all but nonexistent on Mylo Xyloto; immediately dismissing past fans and bringing in new ones. The comparisons to U2 have been raining down for months ahead of Mylo Xyloto’s release; the pairing isn’t hard to see. The guitar lines on “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall” are laced with the Edge’s influence and even Coldplay lead man Chris Martin’s croons have changed from the uniqueness on Coldplay’s earlier work into the way Bono wails. I can make endless comparisons, but it’s simple: Coldplay has lost its spunk and possibly run out of ideas.

Finding a standout on Mylo Xyloto is difficult; there isn’t one. Absolutely nothing pops out and has those beautiful “Coldplay moments” that Viva La Vida was laced with. The most flabbergasting part about the whole album is that Chris Martin claims it’s a concept album. Most of the time, concept albums are easy to spot after a listen, and after numerous listens, I still can’t see the whole “Mylo and Xyloto fall in love in a dystopian urban environment”. When tracks cannot even transition effectively, you know you can’t have a concept album with a cohesive structure.

Coldplay has even followed the trend of some pop acts by compressing their songs and adding overly loud bass and bright instrumentation. It’s honestly frustrating to see Coldplay give such a poor effort after the very solid Viva La Vida. Poor production, brutal transitions, and an overall mess of an album with no standouts or impressive moments to back it up, but really, Coldplay fans will never disappoint as a whole, so Coldplay has nothing to worry about.

Björk - Biophilia [One Little Indian]

5.5

It’s interesting to sit back and take a look at Icelandic art pop singer Bjork’s album artwork. Each disc features a different image of Bjork in a different way relating to the album; Debut has a youthful, energetic Bjork; Post has a more abstract background with a much more intense Bjork; Vespertine has a swooning, ornate Bjork; and now Bjork’s eighth studio work Biophilia has one of the more avant-garde outlooks of Bjork with her flamboyant orange hair and overall steampunk appearance with cosmic quality. The image describes the album. Unfortunately, Bjork’s erratic and experimental approach to Biophilia falls short of being anything up to her more powerful material (Post, Homogenic).

Reading up on Biophilia is intriguing. It might be one of the first science and technology-based albums to be released. Bjork even teamed up with Apple to create the “world’s first app album” with corresponding apps connecting to each song to tell more about the story surrounding it and along with live performances. The whole idea is a bit overdrawn; it’s an interesting concept, but just not for me. I listen to the music and let the images come to me and let the music wash over me rather then have to mesh with a computer screen and have something trying to tell me what I should interpret a song as.

Musically, Biophilia is shrill, unbalanced and overbearing. Bjork’s vocals are, as always, put front and center with an authority, but this time it doesn’t have that cute Icelandic charm that past efforts have had. The song structures feel inconsistent and too one-sided; “Dark Matter” is exactly what it sounds like with swelling dark, atmospheric ambience with too much bass while “Solstice” is too much of Bjork’s shrill, eerie vocals. The sorts of drill and bass Bjork plays with on the ending of “Crystalline” and the bridges of “Sacrifice” that blast unnecessarily and have this unattractive feel to them.

Looking on the bright side of Biophilia, “Cosmonogy” is a beautiful, soaring ballad that lifts, possibly, the whole album. “Virus” isn’t bad, but the jangly bells persistent on a lot of the album makes their appearance far too often, but Bjork’s vocals performances on “Cosmonogy” and “Virus” make those two tunes the cream of the crop. The instrumentation feels too spacious on some tracks and two mentioned tracks find a nice median between the ambience and swelling instrumentation. Unfortunately, Biophilia’s bad outweighs its good by a landslide.

Disappointment reeks all over Biophilia with months and months of anticipation made out by music websites, but it’s not all bad. There are tracks like “Cosmonogy” and “Virus” that somewhat make up for the mediocrity of “Sacrifice or “Solstice.” Bjork’s long and illustrious career is very inspiring, but possibilities of reaching an end are unfortunately near with the desperation of attempting a new “app album” idea to spawn a new musical direction. The ideas on Biophilia aren’t bad, just very overbearing and not to my tastes.

The Field - Looping State of Mind [Kompakt]

8.6

Many think of techno as the loud, thumping music that fills the building with its ridiculous bass and hook-filled synthesizers and other instruments. Few know there is actually a more “artsy” kind of techno, and it isn’t IDM (intelligent dance music), it’s minimal techno. Minimal techno strips down all those raging walls of noise that techno is infamous for and creates spacey, simpler, elaborate techno that is an excuse for anti-techno music fanatics to actually enjoy some beautifully crafted music from Swedish minimal techno mastermind Axel Willner’s, aka The Field, third effort Looping State of Mind.

Looping State of Mind is an ideal title for Willner. The “state of mind” is the loops that Willner near-perfectly crafts through articulate percussive lines that build up and down moving meticulously throughout the seven tracks which clock in for an hour of minimal and ambient techno. The slow-burning goodness of Looping is something that doesn’t come easy; patience and letting the atmosphere and textures sink in is required for a full appreciation of Willner’s orchestrations. Looping isn’t exactly the ideal dance music that techno is coined after. The subtle ways Willner brings his aesthetic to life is uncanny; I see the tracks on Looping as a train rushing by with people jumping on to add onto the personality of the train subtly. Every track starts out with a steady beat that continues throughout the entire tracks, there isn’t any speeding up or slowing down.

Looping music is a curious thing. J Dilla was a master of creating hip-hop instrumentals through simple loops of obscure R&B tunes, but Willner’s loops are unrecognizable and only take a small snippet out of the sample. Opening track “Is This Power” takes a small part of a guitar line and makes it follow the path of a simple techno beat with the occasional instrumentation of a drum and go into a raving journey into a unique soundscape. One of the most enjoyable tunes on Looping is the chugging “Arpeggiated Love,” which builds into a beautiful soaring bell-line that permeates the steady beat. Looping sounds and different elements of music into one aesthetic has never sounded so crisply satisfying.

Even if all the tracks off Looping clock in over seven minutes, they pass by quickly. The minimal appeal Willner puts off is excellent artful music that really changes the image of techno to me. The stereotypical rave music that techno conveys is overshadowed by Willner’s magnificent ability at crafting this wide-open, yet minimalistic music that transcends all of techno’s standards, almost as much as his debut From Here We Go Sublime which was where Willner attempted to find his place and create a daring addition to music, but Looping is in a league of its own where Willner’s maturation comes into place to find his true niche.