Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends

Jul 9, 2008

So it comes to pass... Coldplay release their 4th album and contrary to popular belief, the world doesn't stop turning, the rivers don't run with blood and no plagues of locusts descend upon the Earth. Not literally anyway. Indeed, the first Coldplay album since 2005's underwhelming 'X&Y' arrives with much fanfare, a revolutionary (literally) sleeve and the most pretentious album title (it's a Frida Kahlo painting, doncha know) since Fiona Apple started harping on about prawns (look it up if you want to know the full 90 word title). So what is it that the UK's biggest band have to offer us this time around?

Sporting ambient genius / dullard (delete as applicable) Brian Eno as producer, the new album has been described by Chris Martin as a departure from the earlier trilogy of Parachutes, A Rush Of Blood To The Head and X&Y. It has seen Chris Martin take his charity work to new levels, first giving away single 'Violet Hill' for free and then announcing that upcoming gigs in London, New York and Barcelona would also be gratis. So with all this generosity, over production and designs on taking over the world, it should be no surprise that Coldplay have officially turned into U2.

It would be trite to simply write a rundown of the tracks on the album with descriptions in the vain of 'has some strings, sounds quite like U2' and 'pleasant organ, sounds like U2' but in all seriousness, this would be an adequate summing up of Viva La Vida. No longer will you find an understated, catchy little tune such as 'Yellow' or 'In My Place' in the Coldplay camp. Everything is now big. In fact it's fucking HUGE. It's so big that unfortunately pretty much the entire album collapses under the weight of just how big it wants to be. The drums are pounding, the piano soars and the guitars chug, in fact the only thing that doesn't quite match up to the sheer grandiosity of the sound is Chris Martin's voice which seems uncharacteristically flat in many places. This is music written to be performed in stadiums and the U2 comparisons aren't just coincidence; this is a band making that step up to 'biggest band in the world' status and with it capturing that elusive American market. Overall though it's the music that suffers. Opener 'Life In Technicolor' starts promisingly with a teasing ambient sound welcoming us in, but it only takes 1 min and 30 seconds for normal service to be resumed as the guitars cruelly crush our hopes of hearing something unexpected. From here the album lurches from track to track that are nigh on impossible to separate from each other once the experience is over. The only respite comes in the form of 'Strawberry Swing', an almost out of place glimpse of the days when Coldplay just wrote nice tunes. And then it's over, played out by the bombast of title track 2, 'Death and All his Friends' leaving us cold and wondering why we have 'Where The Streets Have No Name' echoing round our heads.

Harry Powell

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