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

Rating: - Superb
A grower. Well thats three great and one good album out of four. And yes this is a great album, probably their second best after A rush of blood to the head.
And I cant stop playing it, great numbers keep popping up, most recently Lovers in Japan - sublime. Not often does a band do 4 in a row of such quality - I can only think of The Beatles, Bowie, Pink Floyd and (yes) George Michael to match that sustained level of consistent brilliance over a few albums. And maybe Supertramp.

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Rating: - Viva La Vida - Love it
Viva La Vida: Love it, love it, love it.

I rushed out and bought this album once I'd heard the title track on my favourite FM station. Discovered I liked more than just this one - admittedly stand-out - track. I now rate this album as highly as Coldplay's X&Y, which I consider to be exceptional.

More power to Coldplay.

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Rating: - They Must Feel Proud
Janice Battersby's "favourites" involunatry heave up and chew on before swallowing again, another excellent sludge of Genesis carrot puree and 1 or 2 of Bono's amalgam fillings. I'm not a massive fan of Coldplays previous 3 and even though they stole my idea of sampling the cellos from channel 4 news for their title track, I must conceed this masterpeice is more than worthy of hanging prime position in our almost complete corporate landscape. Hi-5 me Bro! That's right - no more fannying-about in the mirror perfecting his trademark fit, Rosequeen Chris Martin is free-fitting whether people like it or not. And yet strangely there remain non-believers, the chinks in the armour, the bugs in the software. I belive the number is around 6 now, with the 7th, the notable late time travelling Joerg Haider, making a dramatic 88 mph exit from the Coldplay-extant timeline recently. All eyes now being on the detained former Serbian leader and Father Ted doppleganger Radovan Karadzic, where apparently deep in Den Haag a twentyfour hour Parachutes loop technique is being used to feltch the location of lucky-lucky-9-lives Radko. But that's by the by as the boys focus on the remaining non-responders in America who despite a commitment from the lads to keep John Kerry in Cleavland Steamers and Reach Arounds for life, roam untethered and dangerous. KEEP YOURS EYES OPENS.

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Rating: - Terrible
A musical version of warm, flat beer. Boring without shame. Buy this if your favourite colour is beige.

Dire!

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Rating: - I don't wanna follow death and all his friends...
A beautiful, touching and emotive album.

Coldplay are stretching out into very introspective waters and this can often be very risky. However, they have done it so well that many like it simply because it is a good album.

The themes of life and death echo throughout the record. I love the way it starts and finishes with the organ sound- a sound that many of us will associate only with a start of a new life, or the ending of an existing one.

The final ( and partly eponomous track) maybe offers us the way are lives go- A blissful happy start, a thunderous, exciting middle and a poignant retrospective end.

When Martin sings "No I don't wanna battle from beginning to end; I don't wanna cycle or recycle revenge; I don't wanna follow death and all his friends" you feel that he is connecting with so many of us out there. This is coldplay's greatest quality, and a very comforting one at that.