New Album Special

back to Coldplay - Life is for Living

Q. Any tracks we should be looking out for?

A. Nope. Its all rubbish.

-- Chris Martin on the preview to Coldplay's second Album

LATEST!!! (19 December 2001)

British balladeers Coldplay, whose poignant songs have garnered larger audiences in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, are nearly finished recording their second album.

The band has written more than 20 new songs for the as-yet-untitled album, which the group said will hit stores in June.

"We started recording the week after September 11, which gave us a fresh perspective," singer Chris Martin said recently. "The new songs are reflective of new attitudes. [They tell listeners] not to be frightened. Anybody can achieve whatever they want to."

Coldplay played some of the new material on their various tours throughout the year, but the songs don't have permanent titles yet, Martin said.

Released more than a year ago, the band's debut, Parachutes, is still picking up steam. The nearly platinum album sold 16,400 copies last week, up about 3,000 from the week before. "Trouble," the LP's third single, has proven nearly as successful as the band's breakthrough hit, "Yellow" (see "Coldplay Escapes City For 'Yellow' Single, Video").

"We thought it was a great song, but not a single," Martin said. "We never thought it'd play in America. It's not exactly Korn. It's saved us from being a one-hit wonder."

Coldplay recently released a limited-edition CD with a remix of "Yellow" and the holiday classic "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," but don't count on buying it at your local record store. Only 1,000 copies were issued to fans and journalists.

Martin said the next Coldplay single will be from their new album and won't hit radio until spring. "It's called 'Yellow Part Two,' " he joked.

The band just returned to a London recording studio after playing a few holiday shows in America, including the KROQ-FM Almost Acoustic Christmas show in Los Angeles.

"We get slightly frightened [at Christmas shows]," Martin said. "We just played with System of a Down and Nickelback. We relish challenges, but it's not the best place to play piano ballads."

Background

It's a Sunday afternoon in April at the palatial Brixton Academy in London. Coldplay are in the middle of a soundcheck, warming up for a sold-out show.

After running through a few songs to check the sound, the band start messing around. They accelerate their hit Yellow to twice the speed and drop in impressive if unlikely covers of Bob Marley's Jammin' and A-ha's Take On Me – later admitting it's "a good song, ruined by boy band 'A1'".

While the four members of Coldplay (singer/guitarist Chris Martin, bassist Guy Berryman, guitarist Jonny Buckland and drummer Will Champion) are present there's one major absence: Martin's voice.

It was lost somewhere in America in March, leading to cancelled shows and the scenario of a singer who only opens his mouth to sing live, spending the rest of the 22 and a bit hours in the day as a mute.

Today he's happy to let Coldplay be an instrumental band. However, their sound engineer wants to hear his voice.

Martin (who has taken to carrying around a note pad) has to talk and he's not happy. They compromise: he'll sing one song and that's it. It's Trouble and it's magic.

Backstage their management is unsure whether Martin will take part in this interview. The week before he'd filmed a TV interview ... but wrote the answers to questions on his hand. Martin spends an hour before each show with equipment to help his voice, then an hour after to repair any damage done.

Apart from the cancelled shows, you get the feeling Martin is secretly enjoying the silence. Not a huge fan of interviews, his voice problem gave Coldplay a much needed break to prepare new material.

Insiders suggested Martin in particular was starting to feel the pressure. On stage that night he'll remark on what a strange year it's been and thank the fans who've stuck by them now they've become a band whose records are sold in supermarkets.

However, a break and reality check has re-energised the singer and the band of late. But rewind to April and it's a frosty Coldplay. Bassist Berryman is a perfectly charming, if a little jaded, replacement for the singer.

"We're a band that are coming to the end of an 18-month campaign for their debut album," he says. "We're tired, we just want to have a break and get on with new stuff. But to the record company we're machines. We love them, but they would be quite happy to milk it as much as possible. There's a relentless promotional trail any band has to go through to be successful. But you have to pinch yourself and think, 'I'm not working down a coalmine, it's not that bad'."

Like Martin, Berryman is uneasy with fame, but they haven't got it as bad as their singer. Guitarist Jonny Buckland travelled to the soundcheck on the tube.

"We don't appear in magazines," Berryman says. "We don't do the rock star thing ... well, we do, but it's in private. Being famous isn't always a good thing. One of the reasons we stopped doing interviews was that we realised they were really boring because we had nothing to say. 'Yeah, we met in college, been together about four years'. There was nothing new to say apart from this one record."

That record, Parachutes, has officially established Coldplay as a big deal. "Our record company's target was to sell 30,000 copies of Parachutes," Berryman says. "We've ended up selling over three million."

They've also become one of the few British bands of late to crack the US. "We've done practically nothing in terms of playing live there," Berryman says. "The radio stations just went mad for it [Yellow]. We're lucky to miss that initial treadmill of playing the toilet circuit."

And while fellow British band Travis opened doors in the UK for Coldplay when their melodic rock sold millions, Travis now claim Coldplay are opening doors for them in the US.

"But Travis opened the doors for us in the UK and the US," Buckland says. "Last year they were taking Yellow to radio stations in America and saying how great it was."

There's now been a dance version of Trouble in the UK ("I heard it once, I don't really want to hear it again," Berryman says) and a Chinese pop star has recorded Yellow. "But we've been banned in China because of the song Spies," Buckland says. "Very strange."

The quartet have adopted the democratic approach to songwriting, all songs are credited as band compositions, even if that's not strictly the case. "Chris writes the lyrics and quite often has the basis of the music written and we all add our bits," Buckland says. "But we just wanted to be like U2 or Radiohead, they split it all. A lot of bands have been split up by one member getting more money."

After their Australian tour they start recording their second album. New songs In My Place and Animal were aired on their Big Day Out jaunt in January, while newer songs Idiot and God Put A Smile Upon Your Face are notably heavier than the Parachutes songs.

"We think our first album is good but it's not as good as what we were trying to achieve," Berryman says. "So we're constantly pushing ourselves. It's so refreshing to play new songs, it's given us a new lease of life."

As for those impressive cheques the band have been getting, Berryman has this to say: "I was thinking about this the other day. I don't really want a car, don't really want a big house. I don't really like material stuff, just CDs, records, guitars. I might buy a fridge. Or a golf course: something I really don't need."

So... what to expect...?

Ironically, Chris Martin is less optimistic about the band's second outing. He told BBC that the band is expecting a backlash and will probably be getting more criticism than praise. Perhaps this is merely a statement to downplay hype as he also said that the new album is more passionate and will be, in all retrospect a much better album than 'Parachutes'.

The band have stated their interest in using electronica on their tracks ala Radiohead and we can probably expect the next album to contain some garage sounds. It's part of "broadening horizons" as Chris aptly puts it.

When Will Champion was asked earlier in April on MTVAsia whether the next album would contain more harder sounds - that is with more distortion, he answered, " Possibly not deliberately but yeah. Possibly. That's the way things are going at the moment. I don't know, actually. It was never a conscious decision to go to a different direction. There may be a couple of songs on the new album or maybe lots or maybe none. Who knows? But probably."

So will the new album be more commercial or progressive? Jonny Buckland says, "I think we just want to make music we like really. And that's sometimes quite surprising and so I don't think it's a straight and middle a line on the choice of commercial or progessive. We don't really want to do either, we can kind of want to do both. We want to make music that means a lot to other people."

"We couldn't set out to make a really commercial or a progressive record, we just set out to make a record we like or that we would like. "

If 'Parachutes' held lyrics that only the band knew anything about, then the new album, according Will, will be pretty much the same - full of personal ideas and experiences. As we all know by now, the band writes with sincerity and doesn't try toying with your mind - down to earth things that connects to everyone who listens; which in every way, makes all the songs so endearing. And Will once again assures us that the truth of the first album will be present in the second.

"We write and Chris sings about stuff we have all experienced. The only way you can be honest with your music is by singing things you know about. At the end of the day you can only write what you know. It's just our lives and stuff like that."

And also, in case you're wondering if there is any other ideas the band will be writing about, the answer is chocolates.

Suggested by Chris, confirmed by Guy Berryman. Chocolates.

A better album than 'Parachutes'? We can probably expect god-like genius.

How Soon?

The cause of much speculation, Chris Martin revealed to BBC after the BritAwards 2001 in early March that they had already begun working on the second LP and it would probably be released at the end of the year. However, according to Worldpop, Martin said that it all depends on when the band will finish writing and recording the the songs. Coldplaying.com can now reveal that recording for the second album will commence on October 4th, 2001 in London.

He was quoted as saying, "We're trying to keep ourselves a bit quiet this year, as we want to concentrate on the new record. The next record should come out next year or the end of this year depending on when we finish writing." So, stash some post-Christmas cash because you'll probably be needing it in the months after. Coldplay will come out with a new album by February 2002 and at the possible latest, early March, in time for the board reviews of the Brit Awards 2002.

Anticipated tracklistings

01. Animals - a reasonably old gig favourite which is played at almost every live show. It is usually played towards the ending of gigs although its line-up may vary from venue to venue.

02. In My Place - This song can't have been far off getting into the first album, Parachutes, since it seems to have been around for quite so long. You can view the lyrics in this site.

03. In Isolation - The band seems to play a fair amount of new songs at gigs, so there's no telling if they might let you have a sneak preview of the new album the next time they come around your town.

04. A Hollow Place

05. A Ghost

06. Murder

07. Deserter

08. Your Guess Is As Good As Mine

09. Amsterdam

10. God Put A Smile on Your Face

11. A Rush of Blood to the Head

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