After the successful release of Parachutes, Coldplay's debut album, critics immediately began comparing them to other bands from the United Kingdom including The Verve, U2, Oasis and Travis, ultimately deciding that the British quartet was just another brand of "Radiohead lite," a brand worth trying but not nearly as good as the original. Coldplay's infectious hit single "Yellow" received a decent amount of airplay, and Parachutes achieved notoriety despite the numerous comparisons to other British bands. Very few listeners, however, expected Coldplay to have any sort of lasting impact on the music scene. Boy, were they wrong.

With the release of their sophomore album, A Rush of Blood to the Head, the youthful yet rapidly maturing band has silenced their critics and surprised nearly everyone. Though echoes of the mournfully mellow style found on Radiohead's 1995 release The Bends still exist on A Rush of Blood to the Head, Coldplay's latest release has forced critics to retract their Radiohead clone assertions. Coldplay has successfully found its own niche in the music scene.

Each track on A Rush of Blood to the Head contains majestic orchestrations featuring Jonny Buckland's guitar melodies capped with Chris Martin's soaring falsetto.

Opening the experience is " Politik," Coldplay's memorial to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a song that was written the same week that the 2001 tragedy occurred. Buckland's chugging guitar riff pounds Martin's message to "open up your eyes" into the heads of listeners.

"We imagine `Politik' to be your beliefs about something, your own `politik,'" explained Martin in an interview with MTV News. "As soon as it arrived, we thought, `Alright, that's going to be the first song' because it seemed like a good idea for a band everyone thinks does acoustic songs to have a record that starts by going `Bash! Bash! Bash! Bash!' With no grace or beauty whatsoever!"

The opening strains of " Politik" alert fans of Coldplay's previous album that they are in store for something quite different from the original.

"I think the differences on this new album -- they're more extreme," bassist Guy Berryman told MTV. "`The Scientist' is a slow piano piece and the opposite would be something like `A Whisper,' which is more of a heavier guitar soundscape and less of a song. We still want to make a record that you would put on and you could listen to from beginning to end without being bored and without it being too long. We could have put on four or five more songs if we wanted, but I don't think that works. Eighteen songs like Moby's got, it's just too much for us."

At times, A Rush of Blood to the Head does enter into familiar territory -- for example, on the track "In My Place," the album's first single. This song was written just as Coldplay had finished recording Parachutes, barely missing the cut for their previous release.

Building from that song, Coldplay has created a masterpiece. Possessing cohesion rarely found in modern albums, A Rush of Blood to the Head is a success from start to finish making it difficult to praise individual tracks. The entire album is praiseworthy. Coldplay has abandoned the overtly moody and at times whiny tone that is characteristic of Parachutes in favor of spine-tingling emotion driven by fervently layered musical compositions. Expect to hear critics comparing other new bands to Coldplay as the British quartet continues to become a more integral part of the music scene.

Contact Emily Tumbrink at tumbrink.1@nd.edu

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