Music : Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends (Gatefold Digipack)

Rating: - My goodness, Coldplay have delivered the goods this time!
My goodness, Coldplay have really delivered the goods this time! Not that they hadn't before. But this album is special - in fact it's a masterpiece - with beautiful production that lifts the music into a new statosphere. Listen to it once or twice and you are immediately engaged. After the third or fourth play, you are seduced. By the end of the week your heart will burst open and glitter with adoration for this most glorious work. From the uplifting melody of Viva la Vida to the soaring progression of the brilliantly named 'Death and all his friends' this album will grip your soul and turn it inside out.

If you're looking for musical reference points then think Sufjan Stevens, Radiohead and Snow Patrol (but better than all three). If you're interested in track structure then remember The Chain from Fleetwood Mac and how it transforms midway through the song. More than this I cannot explain. Just buy this album right away - find a quiet place, free from interuption and listen to it from start to finish on a decent sound system through headphones. And then repeat.

If, like me, you become badly afflicted and have an iPod player which you are inclined to listen to in bed - be prepared for some sleepless late nights!

Well done Chris and co. Some bands blossom early on and then fade. You just keep getting better and better. How do you do it?

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Rating: - Eject! Eject!
Hmmm...Worthy maybe, but not an enjoyable album. No doubt a few die hard CP fans will bang on about how great it is - but secretly I bet they were hoping for better. And after they've wasted 30 paragraphs trying to explain how its not as bad as it sounds and how only connoisseurs such as themselves can truly appreciate the underlying sentiment of what the band were subliminally trying to convey; they too will very soon to hit the eject button and stick it back in its case and on the shelf where it'll stay, gathering dust, never to be played again.

As a mortal, who does not profess to soar such higher intellectual planes - I would describe this album as rather like watching Steve McLaren's England team play: Given the line up of star players, you can't help starting out feeling optimistic and excited that it's going to be good. But after a mediocre opening, you keep the faith hoping things are going to get better. They don't. Then the frustration kicks in as the performance slips in to a dire, disjointed display of arrogance that fails at every stage to get going. As the agonising minutes slowly tick by, you bury your head in your hands to the bleak realisation that the result is not a pleasing one (and you've just wasted a tenner!).

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Rating: - Eureka! A Concept Album! (or From One Star To Five In Just 7 Days)
After having spent the last week listening and re-listening to the new Coldplay record I was washing the dishes from the night before and I had an epiphany:

It's a concept album.

I stopped a moment to think it over. Yes, it is a concept album, and from a most unexpected source for such an thing. Viva La Vida (or Death And All His Friends) is a concept album. I don't know why it didn't occur to me sooner. It's so obvious in hindsight.

My relationship with Coldplay and their music is a troubled one. For many years I have struggled to appreciate their songs. I say "struggled" because it's almost as though they want listeners to be repulsed on some levels while enticed on others.

A popular complaint against their music is the fact that "Chris Martin can't sing" and his 'crystalline' voice annoys many millions around the world (why their producer didn't send him back for another take until he sang it right, or at least apply some vocal tuning software, I have never understood).

Another popular grievance is that Chris and the band are rather pretentious and the "most insufferable band of the decade". What band, after all, supposedly writes and records a song that "everyone should hear before they die", but which never seems to materialise so everyone can actually hear it... before they die.

But perhaps Brian Eno put it best, saying of them: "Your songs are too long and you're too repetitive, and you use the same tricks too much, and big things aren't necessarily good things, and you use the same sounds too much, and your lyrics are not good enough."

I would more or less agree with all of these observations and would go one further to say that I find the production on the first two albums so poor that I almost find them unlistenable.

But while being pushed away by these things I have also found myself drawn to their music. Because there was just something about some of their songs that was (for lack of better word) magical. They seemed to be masters of simple but beautiful melodies and some immaculate pop-music hooks.

And so it was, that with the release of their latest record, I was immensely interested to hear it and immediately bought it. I particularly wanted to hear this song that "everyone should hear before they die", because surely that would be on there somewhere. In fact, it should jump right out at you the instant you hear it, right? It didn't, but that is another story and I still don't know what song this is supposed to be.

One Star:

My first reaction to the album was that it sounded like a tired old band going through the motions, not caring, not really trying. It sounded like painful and excruciating attempts to write one or two songs that might make it to the charts and then filling up the rest of the record with songs that weren't good enough to make it on the previous one. The first track wasn't even a song, after all, and the last one was an alternate version of one of the previous songs on the record.

Two Stars:

After a couple of days I learned to appreciate the two "singles" from the record (Viva La Vida and Violet Hill). In fact, at this point I considered them quite good. But the rest of it I found rather dull and repetitive and awkward sounding.

Three Stars:

With all the aspects of their music that Brian Eno had commented on (Songs too long, too repetitive, same tricks, same sounds too much, lyrics not good enough), why did he then proceed to produce an album with them with even longer songs that were more repetitive containing all the same tricks and sounds and with not very good lyrics?

Four Stars:

Somewhere between 80 and 100 listens to the record I started to get it. This music wasn't standard. Some critics hated this record for the songs veering off in strange directions or being odd and awkward. But therein was the brilliance of it, perhaps? This wasn't an album of standard music. Why any critic would criticise it for being that I don't know. Haven't we had enough "standard" music already? There's only so much you can do. This is an album of non-standard songs with non-standard arrangements and non-standard instrumentation. Okay, maybe it's not totally new and apt to set music off in new directions, but it's definitely not the same-old-same-old music that overloads music stores and the Internet these days. It felt like the same-old Coldplay, somehow, but it wasn't even that either. It was just wrapped in that familiarity.

Five Stars:

Previous Coldplay records were collections of songs. This one is an album. An album whose surface is like a mirror and reflects you away, but for those willing to take the time to tunnel through, there's an entire universe waiting underneath, all songs tied together in theme and style and emotion. A concept album.

The idea that Coldplay would release a concept album seemed impossible to me. And yet, here it is. Okay, so it's not The Wall or Dark Side Of The Moon or Sgt Pepper or Ziggy Stardust or Tommy or The Pros And Cons Of Hitchhiking or Amused To Death, but Coldplay isn't Pink Floyd or The Beatles or U2, they are only inspired by them. And they can take those influences and create something not only of their own, but which reflect what moves them.

At the end of this journey I find myself reflecting on what it all means for my own music. The beautiful acoustic guitars and piano ballads and sublime guitar solos and energy-laced tunes that I myself create suddenly seem very mediocre by comparison. I want to make something of value, and suddenly the value of what I can do seems lost. If I can't make music worth listening to, perhaps I shouldn't make music at all.

The journey from one star to five - from hate to love - has been a difficult one for me. Some music can change the world. Some merely changes your own world. And so I start week two of this new reality in which I find myself. I still am not fond of the song Strawberry Swing, I have to say. I admit that when I listen to the record I skip that one. Somehow the song itself is a pale disappointment of the tantalising promise of its title. But give me another week, and who knows what I'll think of it. It might be the song everyone should hear before they die except that you have to hear it 200 times over before you understand why.

Should you buy this album? Absolutely. Listen to it 100 times and then we'll talk.

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Rating: - Like a fine wine
I'm surprised at how many reviews have been posted after such a short space of time as I know that my thoughts on this album will probably change as time goes on.

At first I was disappointed the placing of an instrumental for the opening track which is exactly what Athlete did recently with their 'Beyond the Neighbourhood' album. If you're going to be different, then be different.

I was also frustrated with the 'muddy' sound quality. Subsequent plays via a set of Shure earphones have revealed much more detail and you can appreciate the complexity of the string arrangement, choirs, church organs etc.

Coldplay have come a long way since Parachutes and this album shows their maturity. It is still possible to enjoy the rawness of Parachutes as well as the more polished Viva La Vida. It would be unfair to directly compare the two.

There is no getting away from the underlying Coldplay sound and just like a good wine has different flavours, this album has reminds me of older tracks. Each play seems to reveals music from another artist and so far I can hear subtle hints of U2, Simple Minds, Talking Heads, Radiohead, Travis and even John Lennon and Paul Simon!

The track order is one of the best I've ever come across and there has obviously been a lot of thought put into it. This will probably change on tour when a subset of the songs are played live, which is a shame.

The only song I'm struggling to enjoy is 'Yes' with Chris using the lower range of his voice, but the hidden 'Chinese Sleep Chant' soon lifts me from the lull. This album is a definite progression for Coldplay and I just wonder what they can do for the next one.

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Rating: - Great album!
Why has it suddenly become so trendy to hate and slag off this band? This is a beautifully crafted album that feels part Coldplay, part Sigus Ros, Part U2. There are little forays into Dandy Warhols and Grandaddy territory too. A delight to listen to for music fans...if you're only interested in pop singles, stay away.

This isn't old Coldplay, nor even the less classic X&Y commercial Coldplay.....but I like it!

Along with Elbow's The SEldom Seen KId - best British Indy/rock album so far this year.