Coldplay - Viva La Vida Review

When the media crowns a band as the next U2 or Radiohead, that sort of pressure and expectations are very difficult to satisfy. Coldplay have been extremely successful as far as their record sales as concerned, however there has always been some criticism regarding their formulaic style of music. Their blend of mellowed down tone and contrastingly upbeat guitarwork is catchingly irresistible, but 3 albums later Coldplay is caught in their efforts to expand their range, and please the same fanbase who love their original sound.

In a bid to show their seriousness hired the legendary electronic music artist Brian Eno[Remember the Windows 95 opening tune?] to produce the album. The opening track, Life in Technicolor clearly shows his influence, and is a clean post-rock sound. Cemeteries of London is a clear cut Coldplay track, and yet has a refreshing sound. Lost! features haunting keyboards, interspersed hand-clapping and Chris Martin especially stands out with a simple message that it's okay to be lost sometimes.

Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love is a splendid track, and the way the parts are segued is lovely. In my opinion this is one of the best songs of the year. However, the album starts going downhill from this point onwards. The attempt to sound different leads to insipid tracks, save for Strawberry Swing.

Finally, this is clearly a much superior effort to the pale X & Y, yet the mark that the band seeks is very distant and will require some soul-searching before that can be attained.