Review: Coldplay – “Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends”

You lucky things, I’ve found some time in between my busy Euro 2008 schedule to write some pleasantly non-sport-or-Doctor-Who related words of wisdom.

Well, having been looking forward to it for quite some time, I was finally able to get my hands on the new Coldplay album on Monday, and having had three days to listen to it (and listen to it a lot) I feel I’m just about ready to pass judgement on it. It’s been pretty difficult, as Viva La Vida (no way am I using the full title, and it does at least say ‘or’) is a big step in a radical new direction for Chris Martin, Will Champion, Jonny Buckland and, uh, the other one.

The album opens with Life in Technicolor, a dreamy instrumental (aside from a few seconds of Martin wailing incoherently) with a great guitar hook that apparently once had vocals until someone described it as an obvious single. That says a lot to me about how committed Coldplay are to making this album different, so I’m already interested. Life in Technicolor doesn’t go anywhere in particular – it’s only two minutes or so anyway – but is a pretty good intro and leads on very quickly into the meat of the album.

And what a song to lead on to. Cemeteries of London is by far my favourite song on the album, and is right up there with the best the band has done. Chris Martin wrote it overnight in response to an assistant producer working with head honcho Brian Eno dismissing his songs as ‘incomplete’, which makes me feel that people should insult his songs more often (I got the feeling enough people did anyway, but apparently not). It’s a mesmerising ghost story that mixes the sinister with the wondrous beautifully. It’s Coldplay Do Folk Rock and it’s worth the price of the whole album. If you haven’t heard it already, find it.

Then comes another highlight (though not quite on the same level as the above), Lost!, which is made great by the amped-up percussion that becomes a theme of the New Coldplay as the album goes on, maintaining a steady but urgent rhythm that should become a highlight of their live shows.

Next is 42, Viva La Vida’s most complex track, that goes through three distinct phases (one of them twice) in the space of four minutes, contemplating life and death and such things in typical Martin style. The variations jarred a bit at first but having gotten used to them I’m growing to really like 42, particularly the Rammstein-inspired electric guitar riffs in phase two.

Now then, Lovers in Japan. Oh, and Reign of Love. Yes, in the most annoying thing Coldplay have ever done (and I include Fix You in this superlative), it’s the first of three tracks actually containing two songs each. The later two are ‘hidden’ tracks but they’re the most obviously placed hidden tracks I’ve ever seen. Sadly, while all three are vaguely interesting, they all bog down the songs they’re attatched to. In this case, Lovers in Japan is one of my favourite songs on the album, an optimistic jaunt that just avoids being too plinky-plonky by speeding up the piano part, but I feel far less induced to listen to the track because Reign of Love, that follows it, is by far the most boring part of Viva La Vida. It’s quite pretty but utterly uninteresting and I’ll be chopping the track in two as soon as I figure out how to.

After that is another two-parter, Yes and Chinese Sleep Chant, which, while both songs are better than Reign of Love, add up to the dullest full track of the collection. Yes sees Martin get rather disturbingly raspy in a song that sounds like a creepy stalker’s anthem. In theory, that sounds great, but Chris Martin is nobody’s idea of a creepy stalker and it all falls a bit flat. Chinese Sleep Chant is interesting, and fairly bravely fades the vocals into near-incomprehensibility as a wave of guitars carries the song through. It’s just two and a half minutes of the same thing, though, and gets boring pretty quickly. Let’s move on.

The title track is of course featured on That iTunes advert, which makes it sound brilliant, cut down to a couple of lines of verse and chorus. The longer version manages to strip away most of the impact of the chorus – there’s very little to tell between it and the verses after the first instance of the chorus – and it ends up being a bit too similar to the Really Exaggerated Sentiment Syndrome that troubled bits of X&Y. I’d rather have the 30-second TV version on my iPod, frankly, but it’s still enjoyable to an extent. Lyrically, it’s even bigger than before.

Then the album rockets back into form with lead single Violet Hill, an anthem led by a fantastic stomping drumbeat and big guitars (which continue to be one of the big selling points of the album) and, for a change, a one-line chorus that doesn’t get tangled in any of Martin’s overworked metaphors (“If you love me, won’t you let me know?”). This must be absolute gold live, and is the closest contender for Cemeteries of London’s Best Song On The Album crown.

Strawberry Swing betrays Coldplay’s introduction to Malian band Tinariwen, who I’ve been listening to before and are well worth investigating (think hypnotic African guitar and you’re most of the way there), and the influences are large. I had difficulties with it at first, much like I felt with Tinariwen, but I’m liking it more every time, being one of the most relaxing tracks and arguably the most different thing Coldplay have done.

Finally, Death and All His Friends closes the album (before being undermined by unnecessary Life in Technicolor reprise The Escapist) with a slow-burning, words-light delight and an infectious closing chorus. Another of my favourites, but I really do wonder why they bothered with The Escapist.

All in all, Viva La Vida does require several listens before it can be properly appreciated but is well worth it. When it’s good, it’s brilliant, and represents a really interesting change of direction for the band. Contrast with U2, whose new album later this year will almost certainly be the same as How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb (I’ll probably love it anyway, of course).

TV: America knows best

Truth be told, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of the United States of America. Invasions of Middle-Eastern countries aside, they butchered the English language and maintain a general lack of awareness of the world they (mostly) control. (Incidentally, I don’t wish to stereotype all Americans in this bracket, there are a good deal of very aware and intelligent people over there – that’s the law of averages for you.) I tend to resent somewhat its influence.

However, it’s difficult not to develop a grudging respect for the total superiority of American television over that of the British. I think I would have a very hard time dealing with the (rather wide) shadow of the stars and stripes that encompasses the globe if it were not for the saving graces of (to name but a few) Lost, 24, House, Battlestar Galactica and so on and so on.

There just seems to be something about the American mentality that lends itself to making amazing TV. There may be a link between the fact that Americans tend to be more outgoing and less guarded than the stereotypical Englishman and the far more edgy nature of American TV. People take risks with ideas and hence we see shows like 24, which created an entirely new format for how a TV show could exist – the real-time hour-per-episode length that we take for granted with the show now that it’s had six seasons. I can’t see anyone in Britain having ever made a programme like that.

Of course, after things become great successes in the US, then the British market start making bad copies of it – witness Spooks, which can try all it want but it’s always going to be an inferior 24 without the time gimmick. On the other end of the genre scale, the frankly pathetic Mistresses that recently failed to set BBC One viewers alight is a painfully crap rehash of the superb Desperate Housewives. (Yes, I’m male, I watch Desperate Housewives. You try it, then try and laugh.)

Occasionally, American TV gets so good that it passes its own viewers by. Joss Whedon’s magnificent space western Firefly suffered this fate – it was critically acclaimed, rightly so, as one of the very best television series of recent years, but just couldn’t get the viewers to survive. As I mentioned not long ago, Jericho found itself in a similar situation (though I’m not about to claim that Jericho is anywhere near as awesome as Firefly).

The only thing that Britain has to pride itself upon is Doctor Who, which continues to fly the flag for family entertainment. The fourth season starts up again on Saturday 5th April and despite the thoroughly disappointing return of Catherine Tate as the new companion, it’s going to be a cracker. Torchwood’s second season has done much to make up for the horrendous first effort, but it needs to be this good consistently to earn its place next to its parent show as genuinely great British TV. Life on Mars was the only other really excellent production we’ve had recently, and even that is having its reputation eroded away somewhat by the lacklustre Ashes to Ashes spin-off.

This is a great time of year for the British viewer, but it’s barely anything to do with our own TV. Running alongside Doctor Who (and, frankly, probably outshining it) will be the fourth seasons of Lost, House, Battlestar Galactica and Desperate Housewives. Fantastically, all of the above are on different days of the week, so almost every day there is going to be some compelling telly to watch. And it’s all thanks to our friends across the Atlantic. God Bless America!