Rethinking the new Coldplay

So I've spent a lot more time listening to X&Y, and while I still feel a little disappointed by it, I'm ready to admit that my inital review was pretty harsh. The more I listen, the more I notice some subtle touches that make it a good album. From the Beatle-esque strings on "What If" to the quoted guitar part from Oasis' "Wonderwall" in the coda of "Low" to the U2-flavored bassline in "White Shadows" to the Radiohead-quality chorus of "Twisted Logic"... Coldplay may be borrowing heavily form their influences here, but they've managed to blend it into a pretty cohesive combination. And I've become obsessed with "Fix You", which I still think will be the monster single from this disc. I sat down and figured out how to play it this morning, and over the past three days, I've probably listened to it 50 times. Even though my initial impression was that it was "created in a pop music lab or something," it's still impossible to get out of my head. Also, I caught Coldplay's MTV special, and the songs hold up very well live.

I've been checking out a lot of movie scores from the library lately, which has allowed me to try a pretty wide variety of films. Today I listened to Diamonds Are Forever, part of recent collection of remastered James Bond scores. Listening to it has really made me aware how heavily the score for Pixar's The Incredibles leans on the Bond films. A song from each soundtrack played back-to-back on my iTunes today, and I couldn't tell where one track ended and the next began.

I picked up a book called The Man in the High Castle from the library the other day. It's written by Philip K. Dick, who also wrote the stories which were eventually turned into Blade Runner and Minority Report. This story takes place in the late 60's in North America, but in a world where FDR was assassinated in the 30's and Germany and Japan went on to win WWII. The story takes place before a backdrop of Cold War-type relations between the Japanese and Germans. Good stuff.
UPDATE: I finished the book last night, and the end was a little disappointing, devolving into an existential discussion involving the Chinese i-Ching, which plays a pretty major role in the book. Still, I enjoyed it overall. On a side note, it's a shame that such an interesting book has to have one of the ugliest covers in the history of book publishing. (Click on the link above to see what I mean.) I have no idea how a headless, armless torso relates in any way to this story. Maybe it's just too high concept for me. ;)