Violet Hill is not one of those songs that immediately grabs you and gives you a good aural shaking. On first listen its simple melody plods along while Chris Martin does a bit of falsetto wailing now and then. When you think about it though, few Coldplay tracks could ever be called stunning the first time around. What this band do best are to craft songs that are easy on the ears but which secretly get under your skin and into your head without you realising it. And Violet Hill’s hook, ‘If you love me won’t you let me know,’ has certainly been bouncing around inside my cranium for sometime now. It’s not an exciting song per se; it’s one filled with a slow-building energy that is released in bolts through the guitar of Jonny Buckland with an electrifying sound never before heard on a Coldplay record. Indeed, the whole song, though starting with an ethereal intro, moves the band far away from the shiny, futuristic and cold sounds of their last album X&Y. It’s still anthemic, still excellently produced by Brian Eno, still tender in the right places and thunderous in others, but it has a rawness that’s perfectly timed for a band so often derided for being dull.
It’s easy to take a swipe at Coldplay (and many people do) for being boring, for being wet, for being simplistic, for rehashing the same song again and again, or merely for being popular. Why then is there such commotion in the music world each time they release a new record? This band hardly embodies ‘the spirit of punk’ or any other well-worn cliché then NME like to hurl at its usual upstart artists of choice, but Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends (when will bands stop with the ridiculous album names?) will probably be one of the magazine’s albums of the year. And they’re hardly a band you’d expect a website like Drowned in Sound to get excited about, but DiS broke their own conventions and gave Violet Hill a single review all of its own. For all the wisecracks, the critics and the public alike treat each new release as a major event in the musical calendar, with fans ranging from mums to musos.
It’s true, they’re not exactly the sexiest band to look at. The movie star wife probably helps draw attention but Chris Martin does not make good tabloid fodder and has never courted celebrity. So there must be something more to Coldplay than fame that keeps record buyers coming back for more. Their music has an allure that crosses tastes and markets. Though their songs could hardly be called influential in the same way that those of their own heroes (U2, Radiohead etc) can, they have undeniably become one of the biggest bands of the decade; a defining act, not of a generation, but of a time and place. They will always be the butt of many (usually undeserved) jokes but, even though it may never be cool to admit it, songs like Violet Hill will keep bringing people back for more.
