The Sonic Double Feature

Based almost entirely on the recommendation of Brett McCracken, I picked up the new Coldplay disc on Friday night. I’d been wavering about it, because I really enjoyed Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head, but never even bought X&Y. I’m glad I gave Viva la Vida a chance, because it’s quite good. Coldplay took an unexpected turn with this album and there are a few songs that are stuck in my head.

One of the cool things that Brett pointed out in his blog post about the album is Coldplay’s take on “the single” — in particular, their merging of two very different pieces of music into one track. A perfect example of this approach also happens to be my favorite track right now: “Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love.” This could have easily been two songs, and two very good songs at that. I’m still trying to wrap my head around why they were put together as one track. The styles are obviously different. Is “Lovers” a study in contrast, or compliment? Is it purely random?

I came up with two other good examples of this songwriting approach. The first is the excellent “Take Me Out” by Franz Ferdinand. The differences between the two sections (movements?) aren’t as stark as the Coldplay track, but there’s a very distinct moment when the song goes into a completely different direction. The second example is Arcade Fire’s “Black Wave / Bad Vibrations” which is more similar to “Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love.” “Black Wave” feels more like two “complete” pieces of music that were joined together, albeit with more related lyrics. I remember reading an interview with Win Butler where he said that the song is basically two sides of one story, or two approaches to the same problem.

Who has another good example of a sonic double feature?