Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends (2008)

1) Life in Technicolour; 2) Cemeteries of London; 3) Lost!; 4) 42; 5) Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love; 6) Yes / Chinese Sleep Chant; 7) Viva La Vida; 8) Violet Hill; 9) Strawberry Swing; 10) Death and All His Friends / The Escapist

It's reinvention in the mainstream sense of things, but as a creative rejuvenation this is an incredibly successful one - and heck, we can probably credit this album for making its traits popular all over the place.

Key tracks: "Lovers in Japan", "Viva La Vida", "Death and All His Friends"

It's probably a bit hard to grasp the nature of what Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends represents for Coldplay when, on a brief glance, all their history looks the same. Their albums before Viva La Vida were huge hits, Viva La Vida itself was a massive one and they continued on the same chart-topping trajectory after it. In the general gist of things Coldplay have always been one of the world's biggest bands, to the point that it's easy to equate everything they've done simply because it's always been successful. But even though it's never been very apparent in the grand scheme of things, Coldplay have always been a band who haven't been afraid to challenge themselves and change when things needed to be: the reason they've outlasted their peers is because they've been able to evolve. Viva La Vida is the epitome of all that. It is a re-invention that not only resurrected the band creatively, but changed them irreversibly.

When you look at the first three Coldplay albums, there's a clear trajectory of a band growing bigger in sound, audience and the space needed for that audience. The music itself across the three albums is all derived from the same starting point, just growing in scope and bombast. At the height of X&Y they were a massive stadium band, playing big pop/rock songs for big crowds – songs that you could have already found on the last two albums in a more downplayed form. The band had started to fall into a rut: the overall sound of X&Y is peppered with the feeling of making music they were being expected to make rather than what they were inspired to. At this stage you have two options: either accept this and continue releasing more of the same because that's what the fans and the people at large have proven they want from you, or refresh yourselves artistically and start from scratch. Coldplay opted for the latter.

If this sounds slightly over the top, pay attention to Viva La Vida's sound. While still consisting mostly of larger-than-life pop songs, Viva La Vida's sound world is from a completely different realm than the fairly straightforward rock band setup of the first three albums. There's all manners of layered percussion, a lot more emphasis is placed on atmospheric texture courtesy of Brian Eno and Jon Hopkins (with the former producing and the latter guest featuring), an electronic flair rears its head from time to time and off-the-cuff instruments like sitar and yanqqin make appearances in a way that sounds like the band just got into a studio containing every instrument ever created. There's a lot more experimentation within the songwriting too. Songs aren't afraid to take sudden twists in mood or tempo within themselves ("42" makes this the song's entire point), there's a lot more build-up intros and outros that the band normally would have chopped and occasionally you even hear whole new, unexpected elements like the sudden shoegaze blast of "Chinese Sleep Chant". The instrumental opener "Life in Technicolor" sounds like it could have been a big pop moment had it been fleshed out into a full song, and then you learn that it was intentionally stripped of its vocals in order to avoid taking that easy route. That's the kind of self-challenge the world's biggest band exhibits here (even though the band eventually went back on that and the song was returned to its original state in the Prospekt's March EP).

It could have fell flat on its face, a band reaching far beyond their limits in a desperate attempt to seem more credible, but it absolutely doesn't. Quite the opposite: this is where Coldplay's genuine qualities and talents are really revealed. It's not just about how rejuvenated they sound here after the slight by-the-numbers feels of X&Y and how that's been replaced by sheer inspiration and determination, but the real treat of Viva La Vida is how ear-pleasingly, foot-tappingly and sense-overwhelmingly golden it is in its actual music. This is what you get when you give a bunch of hitmakers the playground to roam freely and pair them with a producer who knows how to perfect any sound. All its layered sounds, bright vocal harmonies and gigantic melodies sound so unbelieveably joyous – full of sparkling life and bright passion. Everything sounds like it could be the best: the organ-driven battle march "Lost!", the life-affirming parade of melodies that makes up "Lovers in Japan", the suddenly rocked-up "Violet Hill", the utter bliss of "Strawberry Swing", the perfectly epic finale "Death and All His Friends" (which only flaw is how teasingly short its final climax is) and so many of the songs in-between each feel like the album has only just managed to hit its peak. 

The Genuine Big Song, though, is quite obviously "Viva La Vida" itself, well on its way (or already having established itself as) to be Coldplay's signature song and clearly towering over everything else in its presence. The world fell in love with it and how could they not – the simple orchestral riff and steady kick drum beat give it a quick, direct route to anyone's head, the vague-enough lyrics lend it a sense of depth and the now-famous woo-oo-oohs hit crowd participation in the head. But to split it into some basic building blocks is doing it a disservice, and listening to it again without its constant presence everywhere really reveals how it absolutely deserves to be called a masterpiece: one where everything from production to performance and most importantly feeling come together to create a song that sounds quite like nothing else out there while still containing a sense of shared universal excellence to it. It also makes for an amazing point for the album itself: that the whole thing doesn't crumble or sound underwhelming after the centerpiece has left the stage only goes to show how well crafted the rest of the album is.

Listing everything else on the album would be easy, if a little excessive; god knows I have love for the bookends of "Life in Technicolor"/"The Escapist", the importance of the breather break "Reign of Love", how "Cemeteries of London" is such a wake-up moment straightaway regarding the band's new tides, etc. Here is a band at the top of their game, discovering their true selves and it's presented in the form of a musical journey. It also reveals a side of Coldplay that could have gone amiss before – a certain kind of defiant boldness. If the band's original success felt a bit like a coincidental by-product ("Yellow" is the lone extrovert among the rest of Parachutes' melancholy wallowing and A Rush of Blood to the Head only sounds like a part of a trend of its time because it started that trend off) and X&Y was the slightly-too-conscious attempt to match it, Viva La Vida is out to rewrite the rules; to tackle their success through their own means and with their own sound. For all the flak they get for sounding safe and how Viva La Vida's eventual success slightly obscured the point, Coldplay reached out for their adventurous side here and they came back with stunning results.

Rating: 9/10

Coldplay - X&Y (2005)

1) Square One; 2) What If; 3) White Shadows; 4) Fix You; 5) Talk; 6) X&Y; 7) Speed of Sound; 8) A Message; 9) Low; 10) The Hardest Part; 11) Swallowed in the Sea; 12) Twisted Logic; 13) ‘Til Kingdom Come [hidden track] 

Giant band makes a giant album to reach giant expectations. And I know I should like it less than I do, but...

Key tracks: "White Shadows", "Talk", "The Hardest Part"

The X&Y era was not a good time for Coldplay. Well, statistically it was – it was a huge success of an album, propelled them from stadiums to even bigger stadiums, turned them from a huge band into one of the biggest on the planet and it gave the world “Fix You”, one of their signature hits and the soundtrack to so many game show elimination round survival celebrations on the BBC. But for the band it wasn’t the best of times. The shift in scale and scope from Parachutes to A Rush of Blood in the Head had been a natural process that happened without expectations or outside pressure. The mammothitis that runs through X&Y was a direct reaction for the sudden surge in popularity: the audiences got bigger as the songs did, and in order to appease new even bigger audiences the songs have got to get even bigger. Reactions like these create albums like X&Y: albums that sound huge and anthemic because they’re expected to sound huge and anthemic, and possibly because they need to be like that. It’s a creative rut as any and you can tell: it’s no wonder that Coldplay’s own reaction to X&Y was to burn the band as it was to the ground and then creatively re-invent themselves with Viva La Vida. 

Everything on X&Y is surgically crafted to perfection to the point that there’s no life to it. The production is so pristine and sterile that nearly all life is squeezed out, and even the acoustic hidden track “Til Kingdom Come” that attempts to be warm and intimate sounds clinical. All the songs are the size of a grand stadium, fireworks displays and all, yet borderline overblown and needlessly gigantic. The band sound stifled and almost non-existent: only Martin has any presence due to the obvious reason of his vocals being everywhere, everything else has as much personal touch as a session musician. X&Y tries so hard to be the kind of album that befits a global superstar act that it ends up losing what actually is Coldplay’s identity.

And… I still quite like it?

This is actually the album that got me into Coldplay, funnily enough. I had passed on the first two albums at the time because of vague reasons largely to do with my own stubbornness, but “Speed of Sound” was harder to skip. At the time it was everything I wanted – the spacey sound of a small galaxy, glistening keyboards and sky-soaring guitars, both an anthem and yet oddly intimate. Basically the kind of thing I was eating up at that point in my life and the song was so strong that it opened the doors for the band to me. Bu it’s a song that hasn’t really aged as well. Its galactic scope is pretty emblematic of X&Y as a whole: it definitely soars, but largely thanks to its loud and bright production rather than its writing. It’s no wonder it’s been brushed off to the secondary tier of Coldplay hits – enjoyable but hardly essential, more a sign of its time than a timeless hit.

But much like “Speed of Sound”, X&Y manages to stay afloat despite its weight. X&Y is nothing if not direct and universal – because it has to be in its position – and it’s a good job that’s always been Coldplay’s forté. Chris Martin and his fellow brothers at arms have a solid inventory of instantly affable and easily loveable melodies ready at hand to dispense, and even if the band themselves sound like they’re lost somewhere among the sound the basic melodic blocks of the songs aren’t. X&Y contains a number of songs that seem borderline superfluous when you look back at them, with “A Message”, “Swallowed in the Sea” and “What If” being so Coldplay-by-numbers it’s almost awkward, but damn it if they don’t charm you when they’re on. It’s like fast food – instant enjoyment but nothing you’d actively remember later on. 

One other major reason why X&Y is arguably far more listenable than it probably should be is because it houses a handful of big highlights that not break free from the flaws, but end up carrying the rest of the album on their shoulders. Songs that are strong enough lures to attract you to check the album from time to time again because they’re so compelling you’re OK with hearing the rest with them. “Fix You” is the obvious one to point out – it’s an incredibly obvious song admittedly, a model template of a torchlight song if there ever was one, but it taps into what makes such moments successful and feels genuinely liberated and inspired as it explodes – one of few such moments on X&Y which sounds like it just happened rather than was designed to happen. Similarly, stadium rock histrionics are echoed throughout the album but nowhere better than in “White Shadows”, which has a sense of dynamics and urgency that’s missing from its brethren. The Kraftwerk-acknowledging “Talk” is lush and full of wonder, its space age atmospherics mingling with a sense of bliss and wonder. It would be Coldplay’s most underrated single if it wasn’t for “The Hardest Part”: its sparkling guitar melodies, soft organ and genuine sweetness find a moment of human warmth on an otherwise cold album and it charms with such lightness and flair.

Those four songs in particular make it difficult to dismiss X&Y wholly, easy as it is to do. The history books haven’t been kind to the album, especially because its direct successor is Viva la Vida which not only stands as the band’s magnum opus but which was borne as a direction reaction to this. And I admit I may have doodled on the book margins myself, because in hindsight X&Y really does feel like the kind of album that validates all of Coldplay’s stereotypical dismissive traits. But then you go back to it and you realise it’s not actually that bad. In fact, in places it’s really great. Its main issues lie in how it presents itself, how every production board knob has been flicked to the maximum in a desperate quest to be the global success validator it needed to be. But the songs still largely remain effective, the writing being strong enough at places to break through the flaws. Even "Speed of Sound", as much as I brushed it off earlier, has managed to find its way back into my good books because sometimes all you need is that epic brush of sound and on the right day, the way it executes it is just lovely.

Fun fact: the original draft of this review had a lot more negativity. Then I actually decided to do my usual pre-review listen and suddenly had to rush to rewrite the thing with my tail between my legs. My X&Y experience – how I seem to always forget that I actually kind of like it - in a nutshell. Time and time again.

Rating: 7/10

Coldplay - Parachutes (2000)

1) Don’t Panic; 2) Shiver; 3) Spies; 4) Sparks; 5) Yellow; 6) Trouble; 7) Parachutes; 8) High Speed; 9) We Never Change; 10) Everything’s Not Lost / Life Is for Living [hidden track]

Melancholy and subdued, a real case of a humble origin story for a big bang later on. Definitely underrated.

Key tracks: "Don't Panic", "Spies", "Trouble"

Who’d have thought that a whisper like this would end up launching one of the most extroverted, anthemic superstar groups on the planet? 

At this point I think it’s safe to assume that no one comes to Coldplay through their debut album: their global star power has long since overshadowed their beginning and the band are so quiet about it themselves that Parachutes has been all but brushed from history, bar the still-sort-of-ubiquitous “Yellow”. Thing is, through some quirk of the universe things could have gone in a wholly different direction. Parachutes isn’t an old shame or the embarrassing first steps: it not only had commercial success when it came out but also high critical acclaim, with a great deal of buzz and excitement surrounding its release that actually translated to genuine success. It could just as easily have become another classic debut that the band would forever try to live up to, or another victim of contemporary trends as the only real mark they left in the world before vanishing like so many of their then-counterparts. Not only did Coldplay managed to break both curses, but it’s pretty telling of their success since that they’ve gone through so many hits they can easily ignore the ones got them through the door in the first place. 

Parachutes‘ most interesting facet is that it’s absolutely nothing like a Coldplay album. The band have become synonymous with giant stadiums, grand audience sing-alongs and all-encompassing anthems: Parachutes, however, is bedroom-sized and somber, and its muted, dark colours clash ridiculously with the technicolour rainbows the band ride on now. The post-OK Computer Britain in the early 00s was a hotbed for melancholy, acoustic-heavy pop/rock albums and Coldplay slotted among that trend very comfortably. Only the amplified “Shiver” and “Yellow” kick the gear up a notch and raise the volume, and “Everything’s Not Lost” is the prototype for their epic torchlight shenanigans, though to a much more downstated, downright shy degree. Mostly Parachutes simply wallows, with Martin’s gentle piano and Buckland’s soft strumming and minimal melodies guiding the band through various degrees of melancholy and mid-tempo floating. It’s an album largely made out of ballads and mood pieces; melancholy, but in a quietly comfortable way rather than depressing. 

But while Parachutes is well-written for the most part, it does carry the tell-tale feel that it’s the work of a young band who found one thing that works and kept on doing it repeatedly (something the stories about the band’s performance being a little shambles at the time back up - the slow tempos are apparently partly the result of intentionally making the songs easier to play together as a band). That said, the certain homeliness does have its perks. For one, you could never imagine the group ever being able to knock out something as low-key and effortless as “Don’t Panic” in their current form. It’s a (over)short and simple song but so incredibly lovely in such an instant way, and much of its power comes from how completely nonchalant and minor it sounds, Martin mumbling his way through the shuffling verses and the deceivingly direct chorus melody. “Trouble” similarly keeps itself calm and is all the better for it - stadium-Coldplay would have it be full of bombast, but now its sheepishly exploding little sweep of a chorus highlights the song’s overall quality arrangement and melody. Similar moments occur throughout, and it’s clear already that there is a big pop band growing quietly inside, but right now they’re too shy to come out of a still-young band. “Yellow” is the obvious exception and it’s actually the strangeling of the album - after all these years I’m still not sure if it’s a bit too obvious and a little too airheaded to be genuinely enjoyable, or if the sudden moment of melodic inspiration it discovers during its stealth chorus is strong enough to make it a real keeper. 

Indeed, Parachutes is at its best when it stays away from the loud and boisterous hooks and sinks into its warm, home-spun sound. It’s got an intimacy that the band’s never really been able to reach since and when it’s being emphasised – whether it’s the simple beauty of “Don’t Panic”, the atmospheric dwelling of “Spies” or the sadsack daydreaming of “Sparks” and “We Never Change” - the album threatens to become something special. It never quite does to any major extent, staying comfortably good throughout but rarely breaking out further, but its humble intimacy does lend it a little extra staying power when placed in a line with the albums that followed since. That alone neither makes it worth brushing off completely or praising highly, but it’s a pleasant and actually rather good listen that’s maybe getting a little too neglected – both by the band and the audience. 

Rating: 7/10