Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends
Thursday, June 19, 2008 9:54
“They’ve got the commercial clout, but now they want the cred. On their fourth album, the members of Coldplay refract their gazillion-selling pop/rock through a more nuanced lens, drafting producers Brian Eno and Markus Dravs to help them craft more diverse, experimental music. Radiohead they ain’t; “42″ sounds like three different songs awkwardly stitched together in ProTools, and often the layers of production seem to come at the expense of memorable melodies. Two of the best songs are instrumentals: opener “Life in Technicolor” is a propulsive heart-melter that deftly straddles the acoustic/electro divide, and the effects-drenched “Chinese Sleep Chant” finds Coldplay discovering its inner My Bloody Valentine. The rest is closer to the Coldplay we know: a competent blend of heavily orchestrated redemption songs (”Viva La Vida,” already the biggest hit of the band’s career), swirly arena rock (”Lovers in Japan”) and life-stinks-without-you ballads (”Strawberry Swing”) likely to resonate despite the new bells and whistles. —Jonathan Cohen”
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