[q]Coldplay Hot for Album, Tour
Wed Mar 2, 3:40 PM ET
By Josh Grossberg
Coldplay is finally defrosting.
The mega-selling, Grammy-winning British band has announced plans to unleash an as-yet untitled third album in June after which the group will hit the road for its first world tour in nearly two years.
The long-gestating LP--the follow-up to the 2002 multiplatinum smash A Rush of Blood to the Head--had been slated to debut this month, but Coldplay opted to further delay the release to give the quartet more time to perfect the mix. Coldplay shelved recordings made with producer Ken Nelson and turned to Rush helmer Danton Supple.
The band has recorded about 15 new songs--including "A Message," "Talk," "Square One," "X&Y," "Till Kingdom Come," "What If" and "The Hardest Part"--and is finalizing the track list. With the disc nearing completion, Coldplay has been itching to perform again.
"We've spent a long time in the studio and haven't played a gig for 18 months," guitarist Jonny Buckland said in a statement Tuesday. "We can't wait to get out on tour and play our new songs live."
After previewing the new material at a Mar. 12 benefit show at the Hollywood Bowl organized by Los Angeles radio station KCRW, Chris Martin (news) and cohorts will head back across the Pond to officially kick off their tour with a series of outdoor stadium shows, beginning at Dublin's Marlay Park on June 22.
They'll follow up with two a two-night stand at Crystal Palace Athletics Stadium in London on June 27-28, a concert at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow on July 1 and two dates at the Reebok Stadium in Bolton July 4-5. Each venue is estimated to hold 30,000 people.
A North American leg has not been announced, but Coldplay is expected to make it back to the States by the fall.
As for what took so long, drummer Will Champion said he and his bandmates didn't want to rush into anything.
"We were in no hurry because the prospect of touring again was so daunting," Champion said in the band's official newsletter. "But in the end, having no deadline became a problem because we never really felt the need to finish anything. As soon as we gave ourselves a proper deadline we started to be much more productive and the stuff we were doing was miles better."
Also likely contributing to the longer than expected hiatus was frontman Martin's tour of diaper duty. He and Gwyneth Paltrow have been preoccupied with their Apple.
In any case, the delay wasn't welcome news to the band's record company. When EMI announced last month that the Coldplay album wouldn't drop before March, shares in the company plummeted.
Coldplay shot to prominence with its 2000 debut disc, Parachutes, which spawned the hit "Yellow," won the Best Alternative Album Grammy and eventually sold 2 million copies in the U.S.
After touring relentlessly, the band went back into the studio to record A Rush of Blood to the Head, which featured the cuts "In My Place," "Politik," "Clocks" and "The Scientist." A monster smash, the sophomore album sold more than 3 millions copies in the U.S., won Grammys (news - web sites) for Record of the Year ("In My Place"), Rock Performance and Best Alternative Album, and found Coldplay mentioned in the same breath as some of its rock heroes, U2 and Radiohead.
The wiry Martin became a tabloid fixture as well after he began dating Paltrow. After a whirlwind courtship, the twosome tied the knot in a secret ceremony in December 2003; Apple dropped last May.
Paltrow, who showed up as last Sunday's Oscars (news - web sites) sans Martin, shot down rumors that their marriage was on the rocks with Martin planning a tour and her resuming her acting career. The Oscar winner said backstage that she wanted to maintain the couple's privacy, adding, "We're a happy household." [/q]
