And if you get lost at every river that you try to cross, don’t panic — just call Moses…
[Video][Website]
[5.27]
Jackie Powell: There’s a lot wrong in this world and Coldplay and co. know that. Chris Martin recruits his son to create a modern-day fable. I don’t know how they do it, but they inject sonic joy into something as grave as a civil war. How does the lyric “With bombs going boom ba-boom-boom” work in a song as jubilant as this one? Martin utters them so nonchalantly. It’s all a bit confusing but it’s also so Coldplay. A plethora of instruments and vocal harmonies are present. There’s texture. But I imagine this will go swimmingly as the encore or closer to their next tour. I can see and feel the shimmering confetti already.
[6]
Ian Mathers: I have a lot of feelings about Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros’ Global A Go-Go and part of what makes this Coldplay single, in 2019, long after I stopped paying attention, so shockingly good is that it’s the first thing I’ve heard in years that channels some of the feeling Strummer and co. were going for, albeit in this case in a more overtly saddening context (we might all want to know when we can go back and be young again, drunk with our friends, but in this case the longing is coming from the victims of bombings in Syria). I’m maybe even more fond of the deliberately, playfully ramshackle assemblage of the video version, which as it morphs through various lower-fi version eventually assembles into an even more contrasting bloom of defiant joy, but my score stands for the more conventionally arranged album version too.
[8]
Stephen Eisermann: Yikes, these lyrics. Big takeaway: don’t use the tragedies in Syria as a side note in such a peppy song? I spent a good half hour trying to find any reason why Chris Martin and co. would think this would be a good idea and a Reddit comment on a thread I found about this song perfectly sums up why this is such a bad idea. It read “I listened to the song and noticed the bombs, kinda sad really.” Way to make a tragedy an afterthought.
[1]
Alfred Soto: Although the band’s PR team has said it’s about the Damascus bombings, “Orphans” comes across as Coldplay’s “All My Friends”: a willfully kinetic track in which aging dudes realize they’re almost or past forty. “I want to know when I can go/Back and get drunk with my friends,” Chris Martin sings in his by now reassuring chalk-encrusted tones. He’s not self-absorbed, exactly, but his idea of communitarianism is globalism: imagine this track used in an Apple ad.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: It’s Coldplay with a choir, and it’s uptempo, and there’s a near-quote from “Sympathy for the Devil,” and it’s all entirely uninspiring.
[3]
Iain Mew: Coldplay have been adept at changing their identity with every album, both musically and visually. Up until last time, at least, when they just did Mylo Xyloto redux. “Orphans” is that lack of new ideas squared, as they put the sentimental drinking of “Hymn for the Weekend” and the twiddly guitar from “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall” through a thicker early-U2 haze than ever. The saving grace is that “so golden and opportune” is one of the nicest sounding phrases they’ve come up with for a while, and that co-single “Arabesque” is both great and very different.
[5]
Kayla Beardslee: “Arabesque,” for the record, is an interesting and enjoyable experiment. This b-side is just “Adventure of a Lifetime” rehashed, but that was a fun song, so…
[6]
Josh Buck: So taking subpar, “tonight is the night and we only have tonight” pop lyrics and adding chorus arrangements is “experimental” now? Okay then.
[4]
Tobi Tella: “Party” Coldplay was always a weird development to me; I can jam to a “Hymn for the Weekend”, but they’re such a traditionally lame band that I could never reconcile it my head. This pretty much continues on that path, but it feels more honest and realistic — longing for old times where you could have careless fun makes more sense than me imagining current day Chris Martin shotgunning a beer. There are lyrics that make no sense — it’s a Coldplay song so of course there are, but it feels authentic and it’s not boring, so I can’t complain.
[6]
Hannah Jocelyn: Coldplay writing a song about bombs with a boom ba-boom-boom hook is very Shooting Star, but this and the glorious mess of “Arabesque” are the best songs they’ve released since Mylo Xyloto. Coldplay haven’t been serious since Viva la Vida, becoming increasingly campy as the years go on, but this feels like a path towards something more mature. There is an undercurrent of darkness that I appreciate — the characters here ask when they’ll go home again, but there’s the question in the verses of whether there’s home left to go back to. (Of all bands, I didn’t expect Coldplay to rebuke the “we would be at brunch right now” line of thinking.) The requisite “hey we still have guitars” outro unexpectedly resonates, as Chris Martin sings a higher countermelody that should have been the initial chorus melody. Even the silliness is endearing instead of obnoxious; I love that in Chris Martin’s world, everyone stops what they’re doing and goes “woo woo” at random intervals. Max Martin co-produces and adds keyboards, but this is so classic Coldplay it makes me wonder whether Chris’ son Moses was supposed to be credited on production, as he is on songwriting, and someone mixed up the metadata.
[7]
Alex Clifton: A classic Martin melody mixed with U2-inspired commentary on the Syrian War, with a deceptively cheery backing that belies the darkness of the story it tells. “Arabesque” is the better single, but this is the first time I have been actively excited about new Coldplay material in nearly a decade. I am especially relieved that this new “experimental” album by Coldplay does not mean music that has gone high up its own ass. Coldplay has taken some odd turns over the past few years and has not quite landed anything great in a while, but this is a synthesis of some of their better work while successfully spinning off in a new direction.
[7]