Coldplay 'Ghost Stories' Review
Discussion
http://thequietus.com/articles/15274-coldplay-ghos...
Two years in the making, alternative rock band Coldplay’s new album, essentially a concept piece about Chris Martin’s break-up with Gwyneth Paltrow, has certainly garnered a number of extremely favourable reviews. In today’s harsh critical climate when major groups can expect to be torn to pieces by a fearless music press regardless of the consequences, that’s remarkable indeed. It’s all the more remarkable given that all things considered, Ghost Stories is from its arse to its f***ing elbow, one, long stagnant f***ing pool of premium grade f***ing cockwash! I would rather chew off my f***ing scrotum than ever listen again to this boneless f***ing melange of morose f***ing piss-s
t! I would rather eat an entire f***ing yurt, washed down with f***ing beige paint recently shat out of an incontinent yak’s anus! Put it this way; so remorselessly insubstantial is this album that if it were submitted to the f***ing British Homeopathic Association as a f***ing potential remedy, they’d f***ing knock it back, saying: “No good, mate. You’ve over-diluted it, you silly tt!”
Never in human f***ing history, since fish first slithered onto the f***ing land and sprouted limbs has there been a more nondescript f***ing decade than the f***ing Noughties and never has there been a more nondescript f***ing group than those gelatinous c***lords Coldplay! They made Dido sound like Bessie f***ing Smith! They filled the giant f***ing void in pop culture in the early 21st century because they are a giant f***ing void! Somehow, Martin’s knack for trudging up and down a keyboard like a middle aged man in f***ing chinos strolling to the f***ing corner shop to buy the f***ing Daily Express while singing like he’d just been kneed in the f***ing bks caught the zeitgeist of the dullest, do-nothing, think-wishfully generation of all f***ing time! In the rock & roll hall of fame they sit near the f***ing exit like a f***ing birch veneer occasional f***ing table! Getting excited about f***ing Coldplay is like getting excited about the f***ing Liberal Democrat Spring conference!
Anyway, Martin got married to f***ing Gwyneth Paltrow, that ghastly, gulping, giraffe-necked, sick-making long drink of carb-averse goop, they created their own f***ing hole in the f***ing ozone layer flying around the world with Martin warbling about how concerned they were about the f***ing environment, spawned a couple of sprogs and saddled them with life-ruining names, promoted every f***ing vapid strain of spiritual, anti-materialist New Age nonsense while raking in the f***ing ackers like wehounds and then finally “consciously uncoupled”, though it’s a f***ing wonder either of them could stay f***ing conscious in each other’s company at all, given that they’re the two most testicle-achingly f***ing tedious people on earth! And now Chris is sad. He feels like st. And he’s perfectly conveyed that unremittingly f***ing excremental condition on f***ing Ghost Stories!
So, track one 'Always In My Head' sets the f***ing dolorous tone. “I think of you/I haven’t slept.”, whines Martin, while f***ing George, Ringo and Ringo or whoever the f*** the other three are try not to fall asleep at their f***ing instruments. Next up, 'Magic'. No, sorry, it’s not about actual magic. Tommy f***ing Cooper retrieving the f***ing ace of spades from a pack using a f***ing blindfolded wooden duck, not that. Nothing remotely entertaining. No, as f***ing ever, Chris Martin’s here to suck all the f***ing joy out of the room like a giant f***ing Happiness Hoover! A wan swirl of keyboards, like that pink water you get at the f***ing dentist’s swilling down a f***ing metal hole, and Chris is all about how he f***ing “can’t get over” you know who.
At which point you have to say: For f***’s sake, why, man? Gwyneth Paltrow no longer being in your life is like having a 14 inch long celery stick that’s been stuck up your arse for years surgically removed! You should be f***ing delirious! This album should be a series of f***ing honky-tonk piano-driven upbeat bangers with titles like 'Wahoo!' and 'Thank F*** Almighty, Free At Last!' and 'I Don’t Have To Knit My Breakfast No More!', all accompanied to the sound of six-shooters fired into the f***ing ceiling with both hands! All your f***ing friends hated her, were you not aware of that? But no, Chris is sad, so on we f***ing crawl through the cesspools of f***ing self-pity. “All I know is I love you/so much it hurts.” (yep, that stench coming from Stratford-Upon-Avon isn’t the drains, it’s f***ing Shakespeare stting himself in his grave). I’d suggest you drown your f***ing sorrows, Chris, but it’d probably be best all round if you f***ing drowned yourself!
Next up; 'True Love', to a tune akin to watered down elephant smegma slowly dripping into a f***ing plastic bucket. “I wish you could have let me know/What’s really going on below.” No, kids, he doesn’t mean genitalia. Martin and Paltrow are like 1930s Disney nymphs, they don’t f***ing have genitalia. He means f***ing feelings, the c***. Cue also the worst, truncated f***ing guitar solo in f***ing history - like a dying kitten mewing for help, then remembering that this is a world with f***ing Coldplay in it and deciding not to f***ing bother. Now “Midnight” - and guess what? Chris is alone, alone. I’m not f***ing surprised. Any evening out with him’s gonna be a f***ing brief one, with mates making their excuses and back home in time for f***ing Channel 4 News!
'Another’s Arms' begins with an androgynous, anaemic yelp that is quite possibly the whitest moment in all of popular f***ing culture. Shirley f***ing Temple serenading the f***ing Ku Klux Klan with 'White Christmas' during a f***ing snowstorm could scarcely be any f***ing whiter. Next 'Oceans'. Seriously, just f*** off, you insufferable f***ing streak of ttrot! 'A Sky Full Of Stars' breaks into a disco house groove but it’s funkless like a f***ing HSBC staff party - “wave your arms in the air, finish your f***ing mineral water and be back at your desks at 7.15 sharp tomorrow morning!” And so the album wends on - imagine Christ, instead of having to carry the f***ing cross to f***ing Calvary having to carry a giant, ten foot long flaccid penis instead - that’s how listening to this f***ing album feels by this stage!
Finally, the f***ing title track itself. Chris wonders if he himself is “just a ghost”. Tell you what, Martin, you woeful f***ing waste of a snail’s time, here’s one way of f***ing finding out - why not run into that f***ing brick wall head first? Twenty times, just to be f***ing sure?
There was another track but the f***ing CD physically f***ing evaporated before I could play it. Coldplay? C***grey, more like! There’s only one f***ing substance on this earth more colourless and full of f***ing nothing than Ghost Stories and that’s f***ing Gwyneth Paltrow’s urine!
Two years in the making, alternative rock band Coldplay’s new album, essentially a concept piece about Chris Martin’s break-up with Gwyneth Paltrow, has certainly garnered a number of extremely favourable reviews. In today’s harsh critical climate when major groups can expect to be torn to pieces by a fearless music press regardless of the consequences, that’s remarkable indeed. It’s all the more remarkable given that all things considered, Ghost Stories is from its arse to its f***ing elbow, one, long stagnant f***ing pool of premium grade f***ing cockwash! I would rather chew off my f***ing scrotum than ever listen again to this boneless f***ing melange of morose f***ing piss-s
t! I would rather eat an entire f***ing yurt, washed down with f***ing beige paint recently shat out of an incontinent yak’s anus! Put it this way; so remorselessly insubstantial is this album that if it were submitted to the f***ing British Homeopathic Association as a f***ing potential remedy, they’d f***ing knock it back, saying: “No good, mate. You’ve over-diluted it, you silly tt!”Never in human f***ing history, since fish first slithered onto the f***ing land and sprouted limbs has there been a more nondescript f***ing decade than the f***ing Noughties and never has there been a more nondescript f***ing group than those gelatinous c***lords Coldplay! They made Dido sound like Bessie f***ing Smith! They filled the giant f***ing void in pop culture in the early 21st century because they are a giant f***ing void! Somehow, Martin’s knack for trudging up and down a keyboard like a middle aged man in f***ing chinos strolling to the f***ing corner shop to buy the f***ing Daily Express while singing like he’d just been kneed in the f***ing b
ks caught the zeitgeist of the dullest, do-nothing, think-wishfully generation of all f***ing time! In the rock & roll hall of fame they sit near the f***ing exit like a f***ing birch veneer occasional f***ing table! Getting excited about f***ing Coldplay is like getting excited about the f***ing Liberal Democrat Spring conference!Anyway, Martin got married to f***ing Gwyneth Paltrow, that ghastly, gulping, giraffe-necked, sick-making long drink of carb-averse goop, they created their own f***ing hole in the f***ing ozone layer flying around the world with Martin warbling about how concerned they were about the f***ing environment, spawned a couple of sprogs and saddled them with life-ruining names, promoted every f***ing vapid strain of spiritual, anti-materialist New Age nonsense while raking in the f***ing ackers like w
ehounds and then finally “consciously uncoupled”, though it’s a f***ing wonder either of them could stay f***ing conscious in each other’s company at all, given that they’re the two most testicle-achingly f***ing tedious people on earth! And now Chris is sad. He feels like st. And he’s perfectly conveyed that unremittingly f***ing excremental condition on f***ing Ghost Stories!So, track one 'Always In My Head' sets the f***ing dolorous tone. “I think of you/I haven’t slept.”, whines Martin, while f***ing George, Ringo and Ringo or whoever the f*** the other three are try not to fall asleep at their f***ing instruments. Next up, 'Magic'. No, sorry, it’s not about actual magic. Tommy f***ing Cooper retrieving the f***ing ace of spades from a pack using a f***ing blindfolded wooden duck, not that. Nothing remotely entertaining. No, as f***ing ever, Chris Martin’s here to suck all the f***ing joy out of the room like a giant f***ing Happiness Hoover! A wan swirl of keyboards, like that pink water you get at the f***ing dentist’s swilling down a f***ing metal hole, and Chris is all about how he f***ing “can’t get over” you know who.
At which point you have to say: For f***’s sake, why, man? Gwyneth Paltrow no longer being in your life is like having a 14 inch long celery stick that’s been stuck up your arse for years surgically removed! You should be f***ing delirious! This album should be a series of f***ing honky-tonk piano-driven upbeat bangers with titles like 'Wahoo!' and 'Thank F*** Almighty, Free At Last!' and 'I Don’t Have To Knit My Breakfast No More!', all accompanied to the sound of six-shooters fired into the f***ing ceiling with both hands! All your f***ing friends hated her, were you not aware of that? But no, Chris is sad, so on we f***ing crawl through the cesspools of f***ing self-pity. “All I know is I love you/so much it hurts.” (yep, that stench coming from Stratford-Upon-Avon isn’t the drains, it’s f***ing Shakespeare s
tting himself in his grave). I’d suggest you drown your f***ing sorrows, Chris, but it’d probably be best all round if you f***ing drowned yourself!Next up; 'True Love', to a tune akin to watered down elephant smegma slowly dripping into a f***ing plastic bucket. “I wish you could have let me know/What’s really going on below.” No, kids, he doesn’t mean genitalia. Martin and Paltrow are like 1930s Disney nymphs, they don’t f***ing have genitalia. He means f***ing feelings, the c***. Cue also the worst, truncated f***ing guitar solo in f***ing history - like a dying kitten mewing for help, then remembering that this is a world with f***ing Coldplay in it and deciding not to f***ing bother. Now “Midnight” - and guess what? Chris is alone, alone. I’m not f***ing surprised. Any evening out with him’s gonna be a f***ing brief one, with mates making their excuses and back home in time for f***ing Channel 4 News!
'Another’s Arms' begins with an androgynous, anaemic yelp that is quite possibly the whitest moment in all of popular f***ing culture. Shirley f***ing Temple serenading the f***ing Ku Klux Klan with 'White Christmas' during a f***ing snowstorm could scarcely be any f***ing whiter. Next 'Oceans'. Seriously, just f*** off, you insufferable f***ing streak of t
trot! 'A Sky Full Of Stars' breaks into a disco house groove but it’s funkless like a f***ing HSBC staff party - “wave your arms in the air, finish your f***ing mineral water and be back at your desks at 7.15 sharp tomorrow morning!” And so the album wends on - imagine Christ, instead of having to carry the f***ing cross to f***ing Calvary having to carry a giant, ten foot long flaccid penis instead - that’s how listening to this f***ing album feels by this stage!Finally, the f***ing title track itself. Chris wonders if he himself is “just a ghost”. Tell you what, Martin, you woeful f***ing waste of a snail’s time, here’s one way of f***ing finding out - why not run into that f***ing brick wall head first? Twenty times, just to be f***ing sure?
There was another track but the f***ing CD physically f***ing evaporated before I could play it. Coldplay? C***grey, more like! There’s only one f***ing substance on this earth more colourless and full of f***ing nothing than Ghost Stories and that’s f***ing Gwyneth Paltrow’s urine!
I don't know why it is so cool to criticise them!
It is a bit hit and miss, but there is some good stuff on there. I love Midnight (but then I love Jon Hopkins, and it sounds like he had quite a hand in that one), and Oceans sounds like it could have been on their debut album, Parachutes, which isn't a bad thing!
It is a bit hit and miss, but there is some good stuff on there. I love Midnight (but then I love Jon Hopkins, and it sounds like he had quite a hand in that one), and Oceans sounds like it could have been on their debut album, Parachutes, which isn't a bad thing!
I guess there is a bandwagon for some people. Me though, I don't like them because they make the same record over & over to my ears. They are the epitome of safe, Gap chino clad, corporate rock, never taking a risk, never moving on ergo never exciting the interest. It's hard to imagine a less exciting band, personally & the whining lyrical content doesn't help either.
When you have bands in the same genre like these two, why would you ever bother with Coldgray?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6ZNiQblkos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gSE2NK8SDQ
When you have bands in the same genre like these two, why would you ever bother with Coldgray?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6ZNiQblkos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gSE2NK8SDQ
Hub said:
I don't know why it is so cool to criticise them!
It is a bit hit and miss, but there is some good stuff on there. I love Midnight (but then I love Jon Hopkins, and it sounds like he had quite a hand in that one), and Oceans sounds like it could have been on their debut album, Parachutes, which isn't a bad thing!
Coldplay were hyped up as the greatest thing in the history of the universe. The reality is that they do (as has been said several times) just make the same song over and over again, they have roughly zero ability to try something new.It is a bit hit and miss, but there is some good stuff on there. I love Midnight (but then I love Jon Hopkins, and it sounds like he had quite a hand in that one), and Oceans sounds like it could have been on their debut album, Parachutes, which isn't a bad thing!
They're just dull, unimaginitive, boring, and very ... "grey". I do think it has a purpose, I may try listening to the album tonight, I've been suffering insomnia and Coldplay sound like a perfect cure.
Justin Cyder said:
I don't like them because they make the same record over & over to my ears.
clonmult said:
The reality is that they do (as has been said several times) just make the same song over and over again, they have roughly zero ability to try something new.
There are other bands I would level that criticism at before Coldplay! The journey of the first three albums yes - from tender acoustic, slightly Radiohead-ish to the generally poor stadium rock staleness of their third album X&Y. Album 4 "Viva La Vida" however was a lot more creative in my eyes, a really good album along with their first. The last album, full on technicolour upbeat pop wasn't great, but it was different. This latest one on a couple of listens seems a mixed bag with some real dross, but also some very interesting moments. They also have a lot of live energy so are interesting to see.
I think a lot the reaction is just that they sell a lot of records and are one of the few bands to cross over the mainstream these days.
Hub said:
I think a lot the reaction is just that they sell a lot of records and are one of the few bands to cross over the mainstream these days.
That would imply jealousy of success. No, I have no idea how many records they sell & I don't begrudge them a single one. I just think they are dull, uninspiring, devoid of musical breadth & fall way short of the creative efforts of so many of their peers.As for sales, The Sun is the UK's most popular newspaper, UKIP look certain to clean up tomorrow & Simon Cowell is as rich as Croesus. Sales are a qualitative measure of nothing in particular, to quote a man who really knew how to write a good song.
Just to frame my earlier comment, and my position on the subject, I have despised their whining racket since being subjected to multiple repeat plays of Trouble at the turn of the century, and have frequently, proudly sported my "Make Coldplay History" t-shirt ever since those became available sometime after the originating campaign started in 2005. Martin is my #1 candidate for the "People you'd never tire of punching in the face" thread. No bandwagons for me!
I would add that they have written the odd good INTRO, but they inevitably lose it as soon as the vocals and the body of the song kick in.
I would add that they have written the odd good INTRO, but they inevitably lose it as soon as the vocals and the body of the song kick in.
No bandwagon from me.
They're the musical equivalent of the person down the pub that is always there but have never spoken to because you know they'll be boring and you'll have nothing in common. They're completely ignorable.
The missus was watching the finale of the voice last night and I was walking through the lounge when Coldplay came on. Song title had something to do with Stars.. Anyway, I thought, 'I'll give them a couple of minutes and see if they've upped their game. 30 seconds later I carried on - same old bland ste.
They've done well, which can't be denied, but it's not because they rewrote rock and roll - they make average bland music for average bland people. There's a lot of them.
They're the musical equivalent of the person down the pub that is always there but have never spoken to because you know they'll be boring and you'll have nothing in common. They're completely ignorable.
The missus was watching the finale of the voice last night and I was walking through the lounge when Coldplay came on. Song title had something to do with Stars.. Anyway, I thought, 'I'll give them a couple of minutes and see if they've upped their game. 30 seconds later I carried on - same old bland s
te.They've done well, which can't be denied, but it's not because they rewrote rock and roll - they make average bland music for average bland people. There's a lot of them.
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