• Album: Parachutes
• Label: EMI/BMG Records
In the movie High Fidelity, record shop owner Rob (John Cusack) comes to work one morning nursing a broken heart. His sympathetic employee plays a tape of some mellow folkie music, in an effort to console him. "It’s the new Belle and Sebastian," he explains in a whisper. Rob’s other employee (the volcanic Jack Black) barges into the store, ejects what he calls "this sad bastard music," and pops in Katrina and the Waves instead. Sad Bastard Music (or SBM for short) is a vibrant musical form showing no signs of decline. Evidence of this can be found on Parachutes, the debut album from Britain’s Coldplay. Often compared to Gene, Blur and Radiohead, Coldplay at times also sound like Jeff Buckley, Verve, and – yes – Belle and Sebastian.
What’s Sad Bastard Music like? It’s like sitting over a cold cup of tea on a miserable, overcast London morning. It’s like a rainy weekend in Seattle, and not enough change for Starbucks. It’s sung by melancholy folks who sound like they’re ready to slit their wrists, pop their heads in an oven, or at the very least ride around miserably on the MRT. For certain moods, granted, Sad Bastard Music is just the tonic: if you feel like reveling in depression, if your mood stabilizers haven’t kicked in yet, or if you just want to watch the sun go down and surrender to twilight, basking in the immense sadness of it all, SBM is a perfect soundtrack.
Kings of SBM include: The Velvet Underground (the dreary languor of their first and third albums are SBM templates); Nick Drake (British folkie who hung himself); Big Star (Third Album: Alex Chilton’s mental collapse captured on tape).
More modern practitioners of SBM are: The Smiths (e.g., Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now); Red House Painters (truly depressed and depressing); Radiohead (love that Kid A); and the aforementioned Belle and Sebastian (they’re Scottish, so of course they’re sad bastards).
Now comes Coldplay, whose melancholic rock fits in well with the current English malaise, at least among those not committed to dance music. Lead vocalist Chris Martin glides his voice up and down the scales of despondence, suggesting at times a much-less-cheery Ray Davies in his Muswell Hillbillies days, at other times whooping around like the British Jeff Buckley (on Shiver).
Clearly, these lads have influences. Guitars often cascade and ring like Johnny Marrs (from his Smiths’ days), sometimes like The Edge. The songs tend to surrender to begrudging optimism, reminding one of The Verve, REM, or even U2.
Their biggest radio hit thus far is Yellow. Riding along on a humming rhythm guitar riff, the mid-tempo song is a perfect example of Coldplay’s approach, and their limitations. Look at the stars/look how they shine for you/and everything you do/yeah, they were all yellow, go the opening lines, sung in a typically laconic warble. Descending piano lines decorate other songs, adding even more melancholia to the proceedings. Beneath it, songwriter Martin has a gift for memorable, if not exactly upbeat tunes. There’s a note of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, too, in these songs: something lazy and lost and lyrical.
The closer, Everything’s Not Lost, sounds like Coldplay’s version of the REM hit, Everybody Hurts. Bluesy gospel chords are lifted up by an echoing guitar riff that almost makes you feel a bit better about things, which is probably the point.
"Even the miserable parts are about catharsis," explains the press release I received with Parachutes. When I think of parachutes, though, I don’t think of catharsis. I think of taking a plunge, with a whole lot of faith in what‘s strapped onto my back. There must be a lot of people who get that kind of comfort from Coldplay, and from SBM in general. So if you’re one of those, and you’re feeling a bit down, Parachutes may not lift you up to greater heights, but it could help you with a softer landing.