As far as I’m concerned, there are two basic types of people roaming the world: Those who like Coldplay, and those who haven’t yet admitted that they like Coldplay. You can struggle all you want, but there’s something just so charming and inoffensive about Chris Martins’ vocals, something so warm about their melodies.

 

Viva La Vida is Spanish for Long Live Life, and it’s a sentiment that is about right for the mood of the ’play’s fourth studio album, which has been co-produced by certified ‘absolute legend’ Brian Eno. Viva La Vida is an overwhelmingly uplifting experience, and was pegged immediately in the Merge office as ‘the kind of music you listen to in a convertible, driving along the coast with a sweater tied around your neck’.  In a good way, mind you.

 

 

Things kick off with the entirely instrumental ‘Life in Technicolour’, which beings with a nattering electronic vibration that eventually kicks into a surging, uplifting tune that’s instantly recognisable as Coldplay. Things look good through the more moody ‘Cemeteries of London’, which swoops piano and dreamy guitars in and out of Martin’s lyrics detailing some sort of haunting trip down to the dark places of the English capital. Lyrically, Viva La Vida does cover similar territory to previous Coldplay outings – love, loneliness and the search for something unobtainable – all pretty safe, and all quite pretty.

 

If anything, Coldplay have overextended themselves on Viva La Vida – give ‘Lost!’ a listen and try to count the amount of different noises you’re barraged with at once. It’s a sound that isn’t necessarily itself bad, but for a group who are at their best when they’re intimate (compare A Rush of Blood to the Head’s‘The Scientist’, X&Y’s hidden track ‘Til Kingdom Come’ or even – God help me – Parachute’s ‘Yellow’), Coldplay lose a bit of their charm when things get overdone and Martin’s vocals are drowned.

 

Some of Viva La Vida’s finest moments are of the intimate type, and happen at the tail end of the album – ‘Strawberry Swing’ and ‘Death and All His Friends’, the latter revisiting the vibrating melody of the opening track. It’s a shame that there aren’t more of these quieter moments on the album – but it’s difficult to stay mad with Coldplay. After all, they’re so charming and inoffensive.