Tigers Waitin' To Be Tamed

Originally posted 9/24/02

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This week's selection comes from the Fife-Adam clan, via my laptop in Houston. (If there is never another Tuesday's Tune, then Hurricane Isidore has been the end of me.) The e-mail below stemmed from my mention of the new Coldplay album A Rush Of Blood To The Head in last week's Tune. I really like this album a lot, but I don't know if I'd rate it as high as U2's Achtung Baby. If I'm listening to Rush of Blood... ten years from now, then maybe...

From Steve:

My favorite songs are "In My Place", "The Scientist" and "Clocks". Of the three, I'd probably choose "Clocks" as the one to send out, because it's not as anthemic as "In My Place" (don't want people bellowing along in their cubicles) and doesn't quote U2 as blatantly as "The Scientist". It also prominently features Chris Martin's piano, which is a signature characteristic of the band.

I think this album is better than Wilco's, and hundreds of orders of magnitude better than Coldplay's first album, which struck me as Radiohead-lite. The Vines have some songs that equal Coldplay's, but the whole falls short, so I guess Coldplay gets my vote so far as best album of the year. I haven't heard the new Aimee Mann other than the song you sent, but I've always mentally placed her at the level of "highly talented craftsperson," a la her husband or Neil Finn or Beth Orton, all of whom have had moments of knee-shattering genius, but none of whom have made an album as great as REM's Automatic For the People or U2's Achtung Baby or Radiohead's OK Computer, which is nearly the level Coldplay reaches on Rush of Blood... There's something visceral about the band dynamic when it's really working that I think a singer-songwriter has an extraordinarily hard time matching. Elvis Costello did it--but he had The Attractions. Elliott Smith is a one-man band, not a singer with a bunch of studio musicians. Same goes for Moby. Following along those lines, it seems to me Aimee Mann would have to have assembled a really top-notch band performing at the top of its game to match Coldplay on my list--the songs, as great as I'm sure they are, wouldn't be enough on their own.