Finally Coldplay’s long-awaited fourth studio album is becoming a reality.
Last week, frontman Chris Martin revealed that the new album would be entitled Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends and would be released on June 16th.
The tracklisting is expected to be finalized and posted on the band’s official website within a few days.
Simple Plan’s choice to unpretentiously entitle their newest release “Simple Plan” was an encouraging move. I hoped it was a sign of a band reaching maturity, refreshing its sound, and reinventing itself. Then I heard the album. And I discovered that I was wrong.
I suppose there are a few moments on “Simple Plan” that are indicative of a musical branching-out. But instead of rejuvenating a tired approach to music, the band seemed to be sampling rather than experimenting. “Your Love is a Lie” begins with a hip-hop intro reminiscent of JoJo, “Holding On” is a freakish, unnatural marriage of U2 and Linkin Park, “Time to Say Goodbye” contains a few riffs that I swear I’ve heard on a Green Day record, and the chorus of “The End” sounds so much like Papa Roach that it might as well be a cover.
Despite the striking similarities to other bands, Simple Plan did use a few effects well. Two songs boast techno-inspired intros (“When I’m Gone” and “The End”), and three songs tastefully utilize stringed instruments (“I Can Wait Forever,” “No Love” and “What If”). “Generation” also involves some brass that really shouldn’t have worked as well as it did.
“I Can Wait Forever” is probably the closest Simple Plan has gotten to sounding like a mature band. It’s a nice little power ballad, and, although flawed, it is certainly promising. The strings blend well with the drums and guitars, and the piano outro is a thing of beauty. To complete the sound, vocalist Pierre Bouvier manages to give an unusually emotional performance. The biggest drawback of the song could be the lyrics (“Another day without you with me / Is like a blade that cuts right through me.”)
But then again, the lyrics were a disappointment for the duration of the record. The band members are all in their late twenties now. What they don’t seem to realize is that it’s becoming embarrassing for them to sing about how you don’t know what it’s like to be them and how you can’t change them and how they can’t remember how to smile. It’s time for them to grow up. To be fair, perhaps I should mention that they did try to mix in a few love songs, but that’s not a whole lot better than the rest of their drivel. Everything they wrote about on this album has been written about hundreds of times before. They need to move on.
What I do find interesting about “Simple Plan” is that the beginning and the end of the album are very different. As you start listening, it seems like every song is a blatant attempt at another punk anthem for the rising generation. But as you finish the disc, it seems like the last few songs you’ve heard have all been hold-hands-and-sway ballads. I’m not entirely sure if that was done on purpose, but it works pretty well. The beginning is more energetic and it pulled me in. And despite some of the corny lyrics and cliché melodies, the tail end of the album lifts my spirits. When it’s over I feel pretty good about life.
So I suppose even though “Simple Plan” was disappointing for me, I don’t regret listening to it. The band clearly have a lot of things to work on and polish up, but I guess there’s always a fourth studio album for that.
Best performance: Jeff Stinco, lead guitar (especially on “Your Love is a Lie” and “Take My Hand”)
Worst performance: Chuck Comeau, drums (especially on “Take My Hand” and “Generation”)
Questionable performance: David Desrosiers, bass (I’m assuming they just had him play on three or four songs just so nobody would think he left the band)
Buy it if: You love pop-punk, you’re a hopeless emo kid, or you don’t care about the lyrics in your music.
Score: 4/10
Available at Amazon.com
Jack Johnson is the kind of musician whose work has such instant, widespread appeal that pretty much everybody has heard his stuff at one time or another—whether they intended to or not. The man is everywhere. He’s extremely prolific and continues to flood the market. By the time people are beginning to forget his last batch of songs they have a whole new set to get stuck in their heads. But if Jack Johnson’s latest release is any indication, perhaps his music is better taken one song at a time.
Sleep Through the Static consists of fourteen songs, fifty-one minutes, and no memories. It took until my third or fourth listen to even begin differentiating the tracks from one another. A few of them have started to stand out as having particularly catchy hooks or melodies and a few even stand out as being particularly bland. But the spectrum of quality and variety is about as wide as, say, one of Johnson’s guitar strings.
I suppose that could sound like a good thing—at least the record is consistent. But it is also mind-numbingly repetitive and disappointingly unadventurous. Jack Johnson’s music is easily some of the most inoffensive stuff I’ve ever heard. It can be appreciated immediately after just one listen. But it also takes no risks. And while it may not contain anything that makes you cringe or anything that is most delicately described as “an acquired taste,” it also contains nothing outstanding. Johnson sticks to his light, poppy, mostly acoustic guitar work, his bouncy melodies, and his winsome, laid-back crooning and refuses to make any effort at experimentation. Not that I’m saying his next record should be a post-metal opus or anything. But he seems hesitant to test his limits and explore his abilities, and that leaves Sleep Through the Static sounding flat and, ironically enough, soporific.
While there are a few respectable standout tracks, such as the upbeat, infectious “Hope” and the strangely uplifting “Go On,” they only stand out like a missed strip of grass on a badly-mowed lawn. For hardcore fans of Jack Johnson’s previous work, this may be a welcome addition to a collection. But for those people who have just enjoyed a few songs here and there, it’s probably best to advise you not to let one good song convince you to buy the whole album. Buy that one song from iTunes and enjoy it for what it’s worth. Listening to fourteen of these songs may—after you wake up—leave a bad taste in your mouth for something you used to enjoy.
My score: 3/10
Available at Amazon.com