Doves and Elbow are definitely better than Coldplay
 

A couple years back I wasn't willing to say that. I honestly thought A Rush of Blood To The Head and Viva La Vida were great and were just as good as anything that Doves or Elbow put out. But the new Coldplay is a big letdown and earlier this year Elbow put out their third great album. And now I'm starting to listen to old Doves and honestly think Lost Souls and Some Cities are a bit better than what Coldplay has released.

only thing i don't like about mylo xyloto is the guest vocalist chick on that one song. they're definitely my fav band that is actually still together/recording. also i don't see why they didn't just put all 3 tracks from the ep on the album since 'teardrop' and 'major minus' are both there. moving to mars would've only made the album even better. yeah, not cool with the guest vocal thing. and i really wanted don quixote to be on it even though it's essentially a 'dancing in the dark' rip

not really familiar w/ doves and elbow, tho i did see doves at the same fest i saw coldplay at in 05, but i don't remember liking or disliking them

The song with Rihanna and Every Teardrop is a Waterfall are both pretty awful. Also I'm not big on there being three songs under a minute long. The rest is ok but not nearly as interesting as anything on Viva La Vida. It seems as if they have regressed. Went back to the pop-rock style they had on X&Y instead of the artsy experimental stuff on Viva La Vida.

Doves are similar to Coldplay but dreamier and gloomier. You should check out their first album Lost Souls. it covers a lot of the same territory as early Coldplay.

Elbow are kind of Coldplay with a prog-rock/art-rock twist. I've heard them compared to Radiohead and Genesis as well as Coldplay.

i will check em out

dammit i love every teardrop, it's like solsbury hill meets sunday bloody sunday, except w/o really deep lyrics lol [cause cp never have really deep lyrics]

they are a kind of ridiculous u2 wannabe band, but i love them for it.

Wow, that's insane. Coldplay is very obviously a watered down Bends-era Radiohead for the least-common denominator. It's like they took High & Dry and Fake Plastic Trees and stretched it over several albums and spoonfed it to VH1 dads. It took Brian Eno to even get attention-worthy music outta them.

Doves and Elbow on the other hand at least show significant artistic integrity and musical invention, and I'm not really into either. "Kingdom of Rust" is a fantastic song, although I couldn't really get into the rest of the album. :/ I'll have to try again.

BUT I will admit "Violet Hill" is a fantastic song. But that's about it for them.

I will admit a certain few Coldplay songs send shivers down my spine, Trouble being one of them.

Heard their new single though and it sounded really bad and really compressed

i like viva la vida

dont know anything else by any of these bands

Have you heard Asleep in the Back the first album by Elbow? It's definitely one of the best all around debut albums I think. Much darker and less accessible than their later work. Very progressive rock sounding at times.

I agree with you. Unlike early Coldplay Elbow and Doves don't so obviously sound like their influences. You can hear bits and pieces of Radiohead and other bands but they were able to develop their own sound faster than Coldplay.

You know, I probably have... I remember first hearing both bands in 1999-2002 when I worked at my college radio station, and I was like "Oh this is cool!" but never really ventured further, you know? I'll check it out, testes change. I remember hating Spiritualized back then, but an online friend recently urged me to try Ladies And Gentlemen again and it was really great, so who knows...

About that "bits and pieces of Radiohead", yeah I'm sure some people will poo-poo this notion, but what I literally could hear in the last part of the 90s, was a "before OK Computer" and "after OK Computer". It, to me, seemed like after OK Computer came out, all these bands were like "Oh, really? We can make rock music smart? OK!" It was suddenly shown you could make a rock record that had more intricate arrangements with a better production aesthetic, and there was a market for it. So I'd just consider Elbow and Doves one of those bands, one of those Post-OK Computer bands. Even Adore could be seen as Post-OK Computer I'd say...

I've read that before, that there were three extremely important rock albums in the 90s that changed how rock was made or marketed, and OK Computer was the third of those, and all the hype aside, I could literally hear that going on with bands afterwards. It's like just playing their instruments all at the same time wasn't good enough anymore! :D

But, these Post-OK Computer bands shouldn't be confused with the ones who blatantly nicked "The Radiohead Sound", such as Coldplay, Travis, early Muse, Remy Zero, etc.

You forgot to mention the biggest OK Computer plagiarizers of all: the Swedish band Kent. All of their early stuff blatantly rips off Radiohead.

Haha never heard of them! I wouldn't be surprised though.

I once saw Travis with Remy Zero opening. It was so incredibly embarrassing.

I will come out of the Coldplay closet. This is the exact reason I love them too.

I like Remy Zero

sure maybe they were trying to rip off bends-era radiohead, but they did a bad job of it and ended up making some pretty pleasant, folksly, alt-pop/country whatever the fuck

I was a huge fan of them up until about 2000, when their quality took a serious nosedive. They had a (mostly) moody, melodic, guitar-based sound, but Radiohead is a lazy comparison (and everyone who had a guitar and didn't play something happy was "the new Radiohead" back then); their most blatant plagiarisation was of U2, Depeche Mode, and Blade Runner (script and soundtrack). 747 might as well be a cover of With Or Without you, it's so similar, but it's a great song anyway. Their early style was much coarser and more poppy, with the more melancholic stuff creeping into second album "Verkligen", and taking over on "Isola", with more "indie anthems" (and disco...) added to the mix on "Hagnesta Hill". Then they turned into some kind of euro-electro-lite crap and disappeared from my radar, but the latter two albums still get the occasional spin. With hindsight they are a bit pompous and ponderous, or as one reviewer said "Billy Corgan with his pretentious knob turned right down".

Kungen är död/The King Is Dead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJFi5GxD7KI
Celsius: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwErDY9Negs
747: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1ZPEqoznvw

Doves' first two albums (Lost Souls and The Last Broadcast) are fantastic, but I never really got into their later releases...it just felt like more of the same. Elbow...hmmm...I don't think I ever connected with them...I'll give them another try.

lol Is that what happened to them? That's great. It felt like they'd have broken up and their singer pursued an acting career or something.

oh, no, they're gone now. maybe "liked" would have been the better word (but i still listen to villa elaine and golden hum with some regularity). they broke up in 2003 and then the drummer died a year or two ago. : /

Oh, well that's a bummer. At least he lived the dream.

i like swans

so i just googled the frontman

he was married to alyssa milano? wtf.

Oh! I knew that! That's probably why I mentioned the actor thing, I knew he had some connection to acting somehow.

Isn't the guy from Counting Crows married to Melissa Joan Heart or something?

Does anyone else remember these Radiohead clones?