a cell-phone recording of a Philadelphia
racial-profiling incident plays. The next
song, “BrokEn,” flanks Chris Martin with
a choir that echoes his prayer for guidance
through turbulence. “Guns” is snide talk-
ing blues about the folly of fighting fire
with fire: “All the kids make pistols with
their fingers and their thumbs / Advertise
a revolution, arm it when it comes / We’re
cooking up the zeros, we’ve been doing all
the sums / The judgment of this court is:
We need more guns.” The observations
are quick and to the point; the result is a
bird’s-eye view of worldwide disorder.
Although it’s being called adouble
album, Everyday Life is shorter than
X&Y and A Rush of Blood. Its 16 songs
pass in a flash, because Coldplay have
rediscovered brevity. Many seem like
sketches, voice notes, and soloacous-
tic performances. Nearly half are done
in under three minutes, and only a few
come across as full-band to-dos to a point
that makes the singles seem jarring.
“Orphans” is a chipper pump fake that
seems engineered for the express pur-
pose of giving fans something to sing at
shows, the obvious Max Martin moment
every pop album craves. “Arabesque” is a
different game, a big-band moment built,
as Chris Martin recently told BBC Radio
1’s Annie Mac, on a groove left over from
the month during the Viva sessions when
Eno ordered him out of the studio while
he taught the band how to swing. It’s
the undisputable centerpiece of Every-
day Life, from the street recordings of
cities in motion to the message of unity
in the lyrics: “You could be me, I could be
you / Two angles of the same view / And
we share the same blood.”
“Arabesque” fingers Everyday Life as a
moment, like U2’s Rattle and Hum,
where a band that has always cared about
justice starts to delve into black music
and black political outrage. “Arabesque”
delivers its message of peace over a loose
Afrobeat groove and exquisite arrange-
ments from Nigerian music veteran Femi
Kuti and his son Made. (Femi’s dad, Fela
Kuti, appears via a sample of the post-
humous biographical doc Music Is the
Weapon, uniting three generations of the
family in one song.) “Èkó” celebrates the
beauty of Lagos with help from home-
town hero Tiwa Savage. “BrokEn” tackles
gospel, and “Trouble in Town” closes on a
Sowetan children’s chorus. Elsewhere,
there are samples of American jazz
heavyweight Alice Coltrane and Nigerian
composer Harcourt Whyte.
A more shameless act would set off our
cultural-appropriation sensors by beat-
ing us over the head with what they
PHOTO BY BRYAN DERBALLA
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