From the Critical Ashes
Despite major critical backlash following 2005’s mediocre-at-best X & Y, Coldplay in no way found itself hurting for commercial success. In fact, with worldwide sales topping 8.3 million X & Y became the year’s best-selling album, none too shabby considering it had only just over six months to achieve that status.
But even so, what a disappointment. Instead of following up 2002’s breakthrough A Rush of Blood To the Head (which, after just over a year on record store shelves, found itself gracing Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time), the band, having grown seemingly complacent, opted to just lazily remake the whole thing. First single “Speed of Sound,” for instance, was little more than a retread of the Grammy-winning “Clocks,” slathered in a fresh coat of paint and buffed to a high sheen.
However, the all-style-no-substance approach Coldplay took on X & Y absolutely does not apply to the fantastic Viva la Vida. Perhaps playing on its many and justified comparisons to U2, the band up and hired legendary producer Brian Eno (notable in his own right, but especially for his work on Talking Heads’ Remain In Light and, more applicably, U2’s iconic The Joshua Tree) to helm the project. What results is an album that in almost every way lives up to the amazingly high potential the band has hinted at in past iterations.
Making Up for 'Lost!' Ground
While some credit is due to the band members themselves, especially frontman Chris Martin, whose lyrics are leaps and bounds above those offered on past outings, Eno makes clear early on that Viva la Vida is his show.
Having convinced the boys to experiment with various styles, structures, and instruments previously foreign to them, Eno’s influence is immediately noticeable on opening track “Live In Technicolor”: shimmering electronics build from silence to a, believe it or not, pretty rocking zither riff, upon which the song rides to its soaring conclusion.
Elsewhere the band dabbles in tribal percussion (“Lost!”), tries its hand at shoegaze (“Yes”), navigates multi-part suites (“Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love”), and does an admirable job tackling each; to be frank, there’s not a bum track in the mix.
But the most striking difference between Viva la Vida and the rest of Coldplay’s back catalog, which though often lovely was just as frequently isolating and coated in a thick layer of permafrost (see Parachutes’ “Spies” or A Rush of Blood’s “Amsterdam”), is that the whole package is warm and inviting. Unlike X & Y, which, from the opening strains of Straus’ Zarathustra on, seemed cold and calculated, Viva la Vida feels and sounds nothing but sincere.
Viva la Vida is No Mere Retread
“No I don’t want to battle from beginning to end/I don’t want a cycle of recycled revenge/I don’t want to follow Death and all of his friends,” Martin sings during the climax of the album’s cathartic and devastatingly beautiful closing track, but considering what they present of themselves on Viva la Vida the band runs no risk of doing so. Coldplay have a long life ahead of them yet.
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