Coldplay’s “Ghost Stories” Is A Conscious Repose
Coldplay's newest album finds itself estranged from the typical Coldplay sound, and that may be a good thing... A review by Travis E. Pickren, @SafeInOrbit
Coldplay’s “Ghost Stories” Is A Conscious Repose
Coldplay’s sixth album is a sad stranger in the band’s impressive discography. On the heels of the UK rock band’s 2011 album Mylo Xyloto, an up tempo and happy interlude in Chris Martin’s catalog of sound, follows Ghost Stories—an album that sings in the rain. This album will not take you to your happy place, and certainly won’t make you feel good, but it might allow you a brief moment to feel something deeper. The magic in this album is not found in its uproar of crescendos and delightfully pleasant hooks that Coldplay is known for, but found, as Chris Martin sings, “in the swirling of the storm”. This album is about how love lost makes ghosts out of all of us. With Martin’s recent divorce of movie star Gwenyth Paltrow, the album becomes an anthem for his painful heartbreak and casts a haunting shadow on Martin’s personal lamentations.
If there’s one constant thing about Coldplay, it’s that they know how to write songs. Ghost Stories is full of pining poetry. Martin and the gang are some of the best storytellers in the music business, and their latest tale relates to us the pain of love gone astray—a story many of us know. The first and last track of the album opens and closes with a drifting choir, purposefully setting a trance-like mood as the choir gives way to ‘Always In My Head’, with an easy drumbeat that will carry you into a place where the sun shines and things are seemingly good. Though the song is pleasant and almost wholesomely warm, the words beneath the soothing choir and melody tell of a drifting specter trapped between worlds. “My body moves, goes where I will, but it never moves—just won’t be led,” Chris sings. “And you’re always in my head.” Already the ghost is there, not sleeping, ever thinking, never forgetting. “Though I try, my heart stays still.” Martin knows that in the place after love our minds haunt what we’ve lost.
The album’s first single, ‘Magic’ keeps us on a similar theme. This is the song that will be repeating on an endless loop in your head for days. “Call it magic, cut me into two/and with all your magic, I disappear from view.” The magician here is the heartbreaker. Truly, what greater power is there? Love is a potent spell. “I don’t want anybody else but you,” Chris sings, unable to break the charm the woman has put on him—the very same woman who broke his heart. ‘Magic’ is unlike most of the band’s singles just like the album is unlike its predecessors, Parachutes aside: it’s rather low-key and slow, without loudness or jarring crescendos. Yet it has a cadence to it and a hopeful/hopeless vibe. ‘Magic’ is a metaphor for love. Despite his brokenness he continues to believe in magic; still believes in love.
Anyone who’s gotten a tattoo for a loved one and regretted later will know what ‘Ink’ is about. This upbeat track relates the pain of a tattoo to the pain of love. The track has a fun rhythm to it and despite its heavier meaning is an enjoyable listen. ‘True Love’ is a lie, and Martin is okay with that. By the fourth track we’re really starting to get a handle on the story and its author. While nothing special musically, the song reveals an open heart that longs for love even if the love isn’t true. “But one last time, tell me you love me/if you don’t then lie, oh lie to me,” Martin laments. “Call it true love.”
The fifth track, ‘Midnight’, is one of the few standout songs on the album. Never before has Coldplay deviated from their sound such as this. Bon Iver and Imogen Heap have nothing on this dangerously beautiful vocoder-filled gift from night itself. This track finds itself caught in the magic between midnight and dawn where Martin pleads for hope. ‘Midnight’ builds lyrically off of the songs before it and strategically finds itself in the middle of the album. After the heartbreak and the pain you find yourself in a dark place, and ‘Midnight’ is that refuge deep inside where we curl up in a ball and feel nothing for a little while. After trauma the brain often retreats inwardly to mend itself, and so, too, does the heart. The thorns Martin sings about are the thorns of a rose, and in the midnight hour it can seem that all of our hopes and dreams are plucked away, petal by petal.
“In the darkness before the dawn, in the swirling of the storm…
When I’m rolling with the thunder but bleed from thorns,
Leave a light, a light on.”
When people are most vulnerable we often turn to other people for comfort. After a heart rending experience we often go through a period of numbness. ‘Another’s Arms’ lands itself directly in that emptiness where Martin tries to fill that gap with someone else—someone temporary. “When the world means nothing to me/when the pain just rips right through me—another’s arms, another’s arms.” The crushing repetition leads to some major feels. A woman’s lonely call opens the track and continues her soft melody throughout as if the voice were some keening apparition. This isn’t an upbeat track, much like the ones before it. We know by now that this isn’t your typical Coldplay album, and by the seventh song we know Chris Martin’s pain.
‘Oceans’ takes us back to an acoustic sound that again hearkens back to Coldplay’s Parachute days. Very mellow, very soft, and filled with Martin’s polite falsetto. A bleating signal repeats to the end like the heart monitor of a hospital patient, pulsing slowly and quietly like the gentle pang of a raindrop. “Behind the walls love, I’m trying to change,” he sings, looking inwardly and hoping for another chance. At this point the story shifts into a place where Martin is emotionally ready to step into the sun again. Hope is returning to him and in the lingering moments before the song ends we hear the sampling of an ocean before we’re thrown into the only happy song on the album.
Did I say happy? ‘A Sky Full of Stars’ is up tempo and joyous and will fill you with energy like only a song touched by Avicii could. Though there are dark lyrical moments throughout the song, you can’t help but feel like you’ve finally surfaced for air since pressing the album’s play button. “And I don’t care, go on and tear me a part/And I don’t care if you do,” he sings triumphantly, “Cause in a sky full of stars/I think I saw you.” In the album’s concluding song, ‘O’, we see the parallel between the sky, the stars, and the dawn. All of these things have been unreachable thus far, and continue to be. He compares love to a flock of birds and sings, “Sometimes they arrive, sometimes they are gone,” but how they always fly on. “Fly on, ride through/Maybe one day I can fly with you.”
“Flock of birds hovering above
Into smoke I’m turned and rise
Following them up.”
Ghost Stories is a journey through despair, through the darkness; a journey in search of hope. In the final verses of the album we see Martin trying to move on with things, but hoping one day for a reconnection. As a whole, the album is entirely new ground for the rock band who are masters of feel good tunes. Some may disregard the album as ‘not for them’, but collectively Ghost Stories adds a respite to Coldplay’s vast repertoire of pop-rock. I’ve never heard the band sound so raw and honest as they lay their open hearts upon the listener’s table. The band has given us something we can enjoy in solitude, and have offered something for the mending hearts in a broken hearted world. I haven’t been this relaxed by a Coldplay album since their Parachute days, and I’d say that’s a very impressive thing.
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