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The Official Coldplay Thread; New album "A Head Full of Dreams"
Topic Started: Jan 13 2008, 03:17 PM (6,460 Views)
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Anyone else feeling a bit disappointed by the new album? It sounded really interesting on first couple of listens, but with each listen now, I like it less.

There are far too many dull, repetitive songs on it(Chinese Sleep Chant, Reign Of Love, The Escapist). They also ruined "Lost!" with the inappropriate Timbaland-ish production. It's similar to "Miles Away" which could also have been infinitely better without the clunky beats. It also doesn't really go anywhere.

It's not in the same league as the first two albums and to be honest, I'm not even sure it's better than "X&Y" at this point.
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Jun 5 2008, 07:14 PM
They also ruined "Lost!" with the inappropriate Timbaland-ish production. It's similar to "Miles Away" which could also have been infinitely better without the clunky beats. It also doesn't really go anywhere.
" at this point.

Timberlake inspires Coldplay album

(Wednesday June 04, 2008 10:15 AM)

Justin Timberlake was the inspiration for Coldplay's new album Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, according to frontman Chris Martin.

The band's drummer Will Champion is such a fan of Timberlake's hit track Cry Me A River, he used it as inspiration for one of their's tracks, Lost!

Martin says, "One song we're always trying to chase is Cry Me A River in terms of the beats and everything.

"I know that is one of Will's favourite songs. And he did all the drums on Lost!"



:manson:

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Ugh. They ruined a perfectly decent song.
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Andy Gill's review in The Independent. I completely agree with it I'm afraid, especially the final line and the bit about the incessant repetition.


Coldplay: Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends
3 out of 5

Reviewed by Andy Gill

Coldplay's X&Y, they've since explained, was the final part of a trilogy – a claim some might consider a cunning defence against accusations that they're a one-trick pony mining a stadium-filling formula to death. Whichever way one takes it, it leaves the globe-girdling anthem-mongers with quite a mountain to climb on Viva La Vida.

Their Sherpa Tensing on this tough ascent is Brian Eno, sonic enabler to the stars, doubtless drafted in for his success in keeping U2 more or less on their game, and famed for his idiosyncratic approach to the producer's job (on one occasion, he suggested Bono and his chums take a holiday). But it's hard to hear any specifically Eno-esque cast to the sound of Viva La Vida, save for the soaring synth pad behind the tack-piano march of "Lovers In Japan". And one suspects his hand may have been behind the oddly contradictory effect gained by layering tiny tendrils of backward guitar behind the Bo Diddley beat of "Strawberry Swing", which is the most notable thing about the track: certainly, whenever it slips into passages of strummed acoustic guitar, the song all but dissolves away to nothing.

The album opens in a shimmer of keyboards with "Life In Technicolor", building over two minutes of dulcimer and drums before giving way to "Cemeteries of London", a faux-folk piece built from wisps of U2-ish guitar and piano, whipped along by galloping drums. A similarly bustling clatter of dohl drums and offbeat handclaps powers "Lost!", though the uncharacteristic industry disguises what is a typical Coldplay lyrical trope ("Just because I'm losing doesn't mean I'm lost"). It's the first hint that, whatever their intentions, Coldplay will struggle to shake off their old ways; the second comes hot on its heels with "42", a multi-sectioned piece about death ("Those who are dead are not dead, they're just living in my head").

"Viva La Vida" itself likewise cleaves to a Coldplay staple, in this case that of devising a simple, memorable melody line and ramming it home through endless repetition. It adopts an oddly chipper tone for a song about a former leader fallen on hard times, but makes an apt pairing with the cantering battle fantasy "Violet Hill", yet another example, with "Cemeteries of London", "42" and "Death and All His Friends", of the album's fascination with death. The purported passing of their former style, however, has been greatly exaggerated, though whether the attempt here to chart a new musical course will lead anywhere as imposing remains to be heard. This is pretty average stuff.

Pick of the album:'Strawberry Swing', '42', 'Lost!'
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And another 3 out of 5 review from Alex Petridis at The Guardian...

Coldplay, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
*** (Parlophone)

Alexis Petridis

No less a musical authority than Guy Hands has called Viva la Vida "the most anticipated album of the year". For once, it's hard to argue with the new EMI boss: the anticipation comes not just as a result of Coldplay's preceding vast success, but the sense that they finally might be about to offer something different from the increasingly windy and lachrymose stadium ballads that fuelled it. Rock's most celebrated blue-sky thinker, Brian Eno, is on board. There are intimations of artistic insurrection and tumult. The album's title may sound like something you'd find on the cocktail menu on TGI Friday, but it comes from a painting by surrealist Frida Kahlo. The cover features Delacroix's romantic depiction of the spirit of revolution, Liberty Leading the People Over the Barricades.

Meanwhile, singer Chris Martin recently stormed out of a puff-piece newspaper interview, declaring "we don't care if we sell a million less records". This parting shot proves telling about the actual scale of reinvention that Vida la Vida offers. Announcing that you don't care if you sell a million fewer records sounds bullish, until you realise that X&Y sold 10m copies. Selling a million fewer than that hardly constitutes throwing commercial considerations to the wind in favour of a bafflingly abstruse artistic statement. Notice is thus served that we may not be dealing with The Faust Tapes here.

Such thoughts are underlined by opener Life In Technicolor. It starts as a Kraftwerkish instrumental, before the arrival of drums, guitars and a woah-oh chorus suitable for singing en masse in a sports stadium. Indeed, there are moments during Viva la Vida where you feel impelled to take Coldplay aside and explain to them that there's more to reinventing your sound than calling Brian Eno, coming up with some enigmatic song titles and telling people you've reinvented your sound: you are actually supposed to change your music as well.

There's certainly a wider sonic palette on offer - a jerkily funky beat powering Cemeteries of London, a vaguely African-sounding guitar line on Strawberry Swing - but it's discreet shading. Coldplay's constituent elements remain intact: mid-tempo songs, echoing guitars, piano ballads that surge into bittersweet anthemics, falsetto vocals. The words continue to deal only in the most general of generalities - "Just be patient and don't worry", "You've got to soldier on". The messages are weighty and inarguable (42, for example, has sussed out that when people die, their loved ones remember them), but the fear that Martin could let fly with a line about tomorrow being the first day of the rest of your life looms ever-present.

Lyrics aside, Viva la Vida fixes most of the glaring problems with 2005's X&Y, simply by eschewing verse-chorus structures in favour of something more episodic. Uncoupling them from the standard framework allows Chris Martin's melodies to shine: even his loudest detractor could hardly deny his way with a tune, as evidenced here by 42 and Lovers in Japan.

Perhaps more importantly, the songs seem less thuddingly predictable than Fix You or What If? Confronted with a title track so clearly destined to get huge crowds punching the air, you might say that the results are more subtle only in the same way that being slapped across the face is more subtle than being smashed over the head with a breezeblock. But there's no doubt it seems noticeably less craven in its attempt to tug the world's heartstrings.

One might argue that Viva la Vida's mild tinkering with the formula represents a failure of imagination: perhaps it's hard to think outside the box when the box is the size of the Las Vegas MGM Grand Garden Arena. Equally, however, there's a genuine conviction about its contents, a huge advance both on its predecessor and their legion of imitators.

Coldplay remain thunderingly uncool, a state of affairs you suspect couldn't be altered whether they were being produced by Brian Eno, Brian Wilson or Brian Cant: I have a terrible feeling that 42 is a reference to the meaning of life in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, thus raising the prospect that their next album might include songs called This Is An Ex-Parrot and I Invented It in Camberwell and It Looks Like a Carrot. At its best, however, Viva la Vida poses an interesting question: do you need to be cool or experimental if you can write songs that carry the listener along regardless of their reservations - indeed, almost despite them?
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And yet another 3 out of 5 from The Times.

Coldplay: Viva La Vida

Coldplay don’t gamble, they’re just eager to try new ideas
Pete Paphides
3 out of 5

Risk schmisk. An album just like the last one – now that really would have been a risk for Coldplay. But pre-release murmurs that their new album represents a leap into the unknown put you in mind of someone being made to walk the plank and them saying they fancied a dip anyway.

The fact is that there’s no reason to believe that Coldplay are a gambling band. For album two, A Rush of Blood to the Head, they super-sized the formula that had worked so well on Parachutes. Having gone global, prudence prevailed with album three. X&Y stacked up unspecific stadium anthems that, in emotional terms, seemed to do the same job as the American condiment Tony Fatso’s Everything Sauce. No wonder EMI’s new owner, Guy Hands, loves them. With his experience in private equity and Coldplay’s safe, steady growth, he would have seen their portfolio as a low-risk, high-return investment.

Coldplay don’t take their part in all this lightly. With the help of their co-producer Brian Eno, the most welcome addition to their sound is a sense of motion and eagerness to get to the next idea, rather than merely pumping up the same one for four minutes.

The exploratory trips to South America are theoretically audible in the acoustic syncopations and handclaps of Cemeteries of London – and yet Coldplay’s flamenco rattles like the rolling stock of an intercity train. Chris Martin’s period spent stalking Arcade Fire is represented on the rallying whoops of Life in Technicolor but, by jettisoning any other vocals for a dulcimer, the song should sound fantastic rather than functional when they haul it around the stadiums.

Strings – the thick, woozy Eastern kind favoured by Beatles and Bunnymen – loom large on several songs, most notably on the excitably Nymanesque Viva la Vida and Yes. On the latter Martin sings wearily: “I’m just so tired of this loneliness,” in a manner more like that of the pop star known to fly off the handle at paps who impinge on his family life. After about a minute of Martin’s plaintive ivory-stroking, 42 is Magazine attempting Kashmir on six too many espressos. With the bedside manner of a doctor visiting a terminally ill patient, Martin opens Death and All His Friends with hushed reassurances before his band spring to life and roles suddenly become reversed. “I don’t wanna follow death and all his friends,” shrieks the singer.

According to Eno, what it all amounts to is the sound of a band “living at the edge of their possibilities”. Such precisely worded praise could just as easily apply to the logic-defying leaps of inspiration found on a Radiohead album as it does a band of rather talented musicians desperately trying to stay interesting.

Mostly, Viva La Vida betrays the touch of conscientious artisans rather than the lateral lightning flash of genius. Either way, though, the good news for Guy Hands is that it sounds like a million-seller. Great. Now he can go ahead and drop everyone else.
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The entire album can be streamed from their official MySpace page from 6PM if you live in any of these countries:

- UK
- Ireland
- Europe (except Holland, Belgium, Switzerland and Spain, sorry)
- Australia, New Zealand
- Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia
- India
- Russia
- Canada
- Brazil

http://www.myspace.com/coldplay
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Early days, but time to start rating the new album!!

Life In Technicolor 7/10
Cemeteries Of London 7/10
Lost! 8/10
42 10/10
Lovers In Japan 8/10
Reign Of Love 7/10
Yes! 8/10
Chinese Sleep Chant 6/10
Viva La Vida 8/10
Violet Hill 8/10
Strawberry Swing 8/10
Death And All His Friends 8/10
The Escapist 7/10
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It's weird, but I'm just not really "feeling" the new album... I totally adore their first two records and they just felt so much more cohesive and solid than this one, which just feels like a bunch of ideas at times as opposed to songs... It's like they spent more time producing it than writing it.

I could just be talking bollocks though (I am most of the time)
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I really wasn't sure what I felt the first couple of days. I went from thinking it sounded brilliant at first, to being quite disappointed, and now I'm back to loving it again.
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I haven't heard it yet :drama:
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Are you waiting for the CD?
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Strawberry Swing is gorgeous and summery! :alexz:
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Jun 9 2008, 12:10 PM
Strawberry Swing is gorgeous and summery! :alexz:

Yeah, it has really grown on me a lot. It's soooo summery and relaxing. The melody seems a bit underwhelming at first, but it's actually gorgeous. One of my faves now!
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I'm the same way. At first I was a little disappointed, but it's definitely grown on me. Some great tracks for sure

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New Coldplay album set to smash sales records

Coldplay's fourth album, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, is likely to become the biggest selling album of the year, according to online retailer Play.com.

The entertainment website says it expect the four-piece's new release to achieve its biggest pre-sale order ever.

Customers have been snapping up copies of the Brian Eno-produced album at the rate of one every minute during peak times and it looks set to exceed the sales figures of the hugely successful Spirit, by X Factor winner Leona Lewis.

And while Violet Hill, the first single from Chris Martin and co, was released as a free download, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends is currently receiving more pre-orders than the rest of Play.com's entire top 40 pre-order albums combined.

It has also seen 20 per cent more pre-orders than Lewis's Spirit had at the same point.

"People talk about the death of the music industry, but this proves that the right title can still break records," said Helen Marquis, Play.com's head of music.

"The new album should be the biggest of the year, but with upcoming new albums from the likes of Dido, Amy Winehouse, Take That and Oasis, this is going to be a phenomenal year for British music."

She added: "We have not seen an album pre-order to quite these levels before. The previous record holder was Leona Lewis."

Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends is released on June 12th.
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it is strange...due to the whole 'Viva La Vida' track Itunes strategy...it seems that the latter is a much bigger hit than the first single, which doesnt seem to do very well..
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I love "Violet Hill", but it was such an odd choice as a "single". The title track is far more commerical and instant. I dunno why they haven't issued a video for it. Even the wee iTunes ad looks kinda cool.
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The Jesus of Uncool
Chris Martin: The Rolling Stone Interview
BRIAN HIATT

When Chris Martin emerges from a town car on a quiet west village street one afternoon in May, he's dressed like a stagehand — black khakis, black hooded top. You'd never notice him, which is probably the idea. But then he starts singing Talking Heads' "Girlfriend Is Better" loud enough to be heard from across the street. The guy can't help it: He's a ham. The paparazzi siege that came with marrying Gwyneth Paltrow and having two angelic blond children with her has forced a certain public guardedness on him, but it seems he can't keep it up. As Martin sits down for what he calls "an epic interview" — seven hours over three sessions — his band is about to release its fourth studio album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. "It feels terrifying," he says. Martin, 31, worships Woody Allen as much as he does Michael Stipe, and he has the quick wit of the picked-on kid he once was, equal parts self-deprecation and self-protection. Martin's image as a yoga-practicing, pescetarian ascetic is not inaccurate, but he does have a couple of drinks (a Guinness, a whiskey) over the course of two days, and is almost offended when I hesitate to order a hamburger in his presence. "I'm not a fascist about it," he says. "I'm not going to report you to Chrissie Hynde!"

In contrast to the soothing, warm-blanket vibe of Coldplay's music, Martin is almost unnervingly intense: He has an endearing, Hugh Grant-like stammer, but when he feels strongly about what he's saying — which is often — his eyes give off little sparks, like he's a mad scientist detailing plans for world domination. That drive, along with his band's facility for sincere, uplifting rock in the U2 mold — simultaneously melodic and gigantic Ð has fueled Coldplay's rise from a college band to one of the biggest rock acts of the decade. But despite it all, Martin can't stop feeling like an underdog. "You've got to be hungry," he says. "If your wife went out with Brad Pitt, you'd want to prove yourself, you know what I mean?"

What was the mood of the band going into your new record?

On our last album, we took a real beating from some people, and by the end we felt like no producer would really want to work with us, basically. We were bigger than we were good — we were very hungry to improve on a basic level. So I asked Brian Eno, "Do you know any producers who could help us to get better as a band?" And he said, "Well, I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, but I might be the man."

What was his assessment of the band?

He goes, "Your songs are too long. And you're too repetitive, and you use the same tricks too much, and big things aren't necessarily good things, and you use the same sounds too much, and your lyrics are not good enough." He broke it down.

How did you respond?

You deal with it. You can either sit 'round, look at your platinum discs and say, "Fuck you, you're all wrong," or you can go, "OK, he's probably got a point." Brian and Markus [Dravs, the co-producer] broke us down in a sort of military boot-camp way. Within 20 minutes, we'd forgotten about any previous record sales.

X&Y got some mixed reviews, but the harshest was from the New York Times, which called Coldplay the most insufferable band of the decade. How did you handle that?

It was a big deal. It's the first real attack on your band, and from a publication we all respect. I agreed with a lot of the points. It was like, "Yeah, I do sometimes go for the obvious, and I do sometimes fall back on old tricks." So, in a way, it was liberating to see that someone else realized that also. And there is something glamorous to me in taking a bit of a beating and keeping on going. When you do something that some people don't like quite so much, then you are free again. Your whole canvas is open. You don't have to fall back on piano, we don't have to fall back on falsetto, you don't have to fall back on every song being a yearning love song.

There's a freedom in the new songs — it's not verse-chorus, verse-chorus anymore.

Well, I'm still a big believer in the chorus. But there was one day where Brian Eno came in and said, "I think prog-rock is vastly underestimated and will one day be fashionable again. And I think you should consider not necessarily doing the same song structures that you have done before." And anytime that he says he finds something exciting, you just kind of do it.

On the first single, "Violet Hill," you sing about a fox becoming a god and a "carnival of idiots on show." Was the song inspired by Fox News?

No one's got that before, no one in the band, no one. The first line in that song is the first line of any song we ever wrote. Years ago, when Guy [Berryman, bassist] heard that first line and that first little melody — "It was a long and dark December" — he said, "OK, I'll join the band." But we just didn't have the other 49 lines until last year. And then one day I was watching Bill O'Reilly, and I was like, "I know how to finish that song."

My best friend, Tim, he's a musician in a band called the High Wire, but he also has to work in a bar. He was having trouble with his boss, and it made me think that so many people spend their lives being told what to do by people that they just don't like. So it was that idea, and watching Bill O'Reilly, and all these words just came out.

On "Death and All His Friends," there's this great topical line: "I don't want a cycle of recycled revenge."

That's Brian Eno's line. I had this blank spot in the lyrics: "I don't want to battle from beginning to end. Something, something, something. I don't want to follow death and all of his friends." So we were all having a sandwich, and it's like, "I don't want to watch too many episodes of Friends? No, that won't do. I don't want to listen to Radiohead's The Bends? No. I don't want to eat any Jerry and Ben's? No." And then Brian came out with the line, and he was like, "I quite like that. You should use that."

It does speak to the state of the world.

And it's fucking true, man. You can see it everywhere. It's like, when are we going to learn? We're never going to learn, is the answer. It's an ultimate bummer, and the last humans on Earth will really kick themselves. You and I are living in the time when revenge is the most dangerous thing, because the stakes are so high and the weaponry is so advanced.

Do you see any reason for hope?

As soon as Barack Obama becomes president, people will be a bit more optimistic. If Obama was to be president, it would immediately change the whole outside world's opinion of America overnight. America's public image at the moment is really bad. And it's a bummer, because over half of Americans are the coolest people on the planet. But they've been so misrepresented.

Do you think he can win?

I do. But I think that, really, the fair thing would be, in electing the American president, to let everyone in the world vote, because it affects all of us. If there was a world vote, there's no question who would win. No question. Of course, Barack Obama is human like the rest of us. He's going to fuck up. But I'm just trying to look on the bright side. What's the point of being negative? Where does that get us? It gets you your own radio chat show, but it doesn't really do anything for the world.

In your own efforts to do something for the world, you've taken shit for doing things like writing a symbol for fair trade on your hands.
One of our big conversations that we always have in this band is, we don't see rock & roll as being about coke-taking, leather-trouser-wearing rebellion, because that to us is not rebellion anymore. The spirit of rock & roll is freedom. It's about following what you believe in and not caring what anyone else says. And if that means writing something on your hand, then you've got to write something on your hand. It doesn't matter if you don't look as cool as the Ramones — you're never going to, anyway. So I know that we'll be ridiculed for this and look stupid for that. But as long as we believe in what we're doing, we can't apologize for it.

[Excerpt from Issue 1055 — June 26, 2008]
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He's one of the very few rock stars who come across as sincere. I really like him as a person as well as a musician.
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