Coldplay

To get myself through the interminable trip home (sitting on the floor in JFK running my Fortran debugger at 4:10 a.m.) I bought the new Coldplay album. Yes, I know listening to Coldplay is lame. I don't care. I love this sort of empty-calories power pop. Or I would if not for the heinous quality of Chris Martin's lyrics, which on this effort seem to be some sort of passive-aggressive ode to failing grade-8 geometry. I try to ignore them and indulge in the falsetto and driving crunchy guitar and good production and endless hooks. But the procession of physics-for-poets lines like "You’re a part of the human race / All the stars in outer space / You’re a part of a system” just really subtracts from the Coldplay listening experience.

And how did x&y end up with the same metascore as the far-superior new Gomez album? There is no justice in the world.

Substance tomorrow, promise.