“Subterranean Homesick Alien” is as appropriate a Radiohead reference point as anything on The Bends. It sounds like the work of regular people, like four guys excited to rock the local pub even as they nurse more grandiose ambitions.
Ironically given its title, there’s a down-to-earth quality to the band’s first album.
Martin, now one of the most famous people in the world, would have to return to the headspace of the unassuming Exeter kid fresh out of uni, steeped in quarter-life melancholy yet optimistic enough to bookend his album with assertions that “we live in a beautiful world” and “everything’s not lost.” Bandmates Jonny Buckland, Guy Berryman, and Will Champion - with whom Martin had linked up while studying ancient Greek and Latin at University College London, first under godawful names like Pectoralz and Starfish - would have to unlearn everything they know about radio-friendly sparkle and stadium-sized bombast. But their debut album, released 20 years ago today, has a homespun charm the band has never since managed.Ĭoldplay couldn’t have made another album as pastoral as Parachutes if they’d tried. I love Viva La Vida and Everyday Life and “The Scientist” and “Magic” and, yes, even “Fix You.” Despite some obvious missteps and a meek-yet-painfully-extra disposition that led some listeners to dismiss them as insufferable sops, I tend to believe Coldplay are underrated on the whole. Not that I’d disparage what came after, at least not most of it. And then Chris Martin went walking down the beach, Coldplay got bigger than the rest of those “ stool rock” acts combined, and the band that made Parachutes ceased to exist.
Before the U2-for-millennials arena rock, the Grey’s Anatomy tearjerker power ballads, the old-timey military fatigues, the full-fledged mainstream pop immersion, the exceedingly grand and often facepalm-worthy gestures, the Hollywood marriage and “conscious uncoupling,” the superstar rappers squabbling over who asked for a guest feature first - before Coldplay became the Coldplay we know today - they were part of a wave of edgeless English blokes imagining what might’ve happened if Thom Yorke had never discovered Warp Records and instead decided to just keep remaking “High And Dry.” This was the era of Starsailor and Stereophonics and Doves and Elbow and Turin Brakes and Badly Drawn Boy, a post-Britpop scene in which Coldplay were firmly entrenched. Raise your hand if you remember when Coldplay were the new Travis.
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