Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends Review
Coldplay has e'er known how to appeal to the masses. All of their albums since their post-Brit pop soft rock debut Parachutes take come with their ain global mega-hits, most of them emotional stadium anthems that don't really say much of anything. The debate over whether this makes Coldplay an essential pop group or an insufferably vapid snoozefest is 1 that will rage on until the ring calls it quits, and in 2005, it looked like the latter would be the band's legacy. Coldplay's 3rd album X&Y was swollen and repetitive, a lightweight U2 false that pushed merely to make full the stadiums they had recently begun selling out. Three years later, though, Chris Martin and his ring released the perfect Coldplay album.
Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends succeeds in everything that it tries to do. At ten songs in 45 minutes, the album is the lightning-in-a-bottle strike of an normally clumsy and inconsistent ring of a sudden hitting their stride. It'southward so rare for any artist to achieve their fullest potential in 1 project as efficiently as this, and still the best-selling album of 2008 has flown nether disquisitional radar because of its popularity. Coldplay has been so often criticized for not being Radiohead or U2 that their identity-defining masterpiece has been virtually left out of the word. Viva deserves recognition, so let us embark on what would be career suicide for a Pitchfork author: a rave Coldplay review.
Martin and co.'south fourth album opens with an entrancing, shimmering ambient passage from producer and Brian Eno protégé Jon Hopkins. The motif would later be featured as a total-length track on Hopkins' breakout album Insides, but here it's an awakening, ushering us into a world immediately different from whatever previous Coldplay record. This is the first instance of what has become one of the grouping's greatest strengths, a humble instinct for calling on especially skilled collaborators to fill gaps in their own unremarkable technical abilities (see 2014'due south Avicii characteristic "A Heaven Full Of Stars"). "Life in Technicolor" breaks out into a cathartic guitar-driven instrumental canticle. On Viva La Vida, Coldplay finally learned how to get out of their ain mode, and the album'due south soaring opener is one of the strongest examples of this lesson.
"Cemeteries of London" is at once intense and ethereal, with its center-racing three count and driving bassline underscoring an atmosphere of reverbed vocals and pulsating guitars. Coldplay masterfully uses their guitars for ambience, doing correct by dream pop inspiration Slowdive. The core of the rail is a tight three minutes, notably improving on the overlong cuts throughout X&Y, and a somber piano outro provides a perfectly placed breath before the massive "Lost!" This much organ shouldn't sound this skilful, but Brian Eno and Markus Dravs' mixing of the vocal's signature instrument with heavenly bankroll vocals and stadium-filling guitar somehow gives Martin the space to sing where lesser Bono impersonators would choose to belt their lyrics instead.
The start of "42's" two parts is the closest we get to X&Y'due south piano balladry, but a subtle utilise of strings and a persistently unsettled chord progression makes this far more interesting than anything on that record. The track doesn't linger in this space but rather transitions to a jam that breaks out further into an invigorating stone passage. The following "Lovers in Japan" is similarly segmented every bit Coldplay continues to experiment with song construction, opening with a huge and uplifting anthem elevated by more soaring ambient guitar furnishings and closing with an intimate piano tune flavored by distant guitar strumming. "42" and "Lovers in Japan" mirror each other beautifully in this respect, bring into focus Coldplay'south newfound knack for album flow.
"Yes" is maybe Coldplay's most experimental vocal, with Martin singing in his lower register over heavy guitar riffs and screeching, dissonant string flourishes. It'due south peradventure the merely time the band has ever sounded gritty, managing to sell Chris Martin'due south cries of "I've become and so tired of this loneliness." This song too offers up a second office, the hidden track "Chinese Slumber Chant," three minutes of shoegaze bliss. Information technology'southward a cyclone of slightly off-kilter guitar, cymbals and ethereal vocals that pays a loving tribute to My Bloody Valentine. Coldplay was assuming enough to imitate a style that should take been way above their skill level. They absolutely nailed it.
The album's point of highest energy leads right into hit single "Viva La Vida." Sweeping strings are used for both tune and ambience, and Martin sings of a fall from grace with imagery of castles continuing on pillars of table salt and sand over rolling drums and church bells. This visceral depiction of such a deep-seated and universal fear is the essence of why Coldplay'south music has touched so many people around the earth. The album, nay, Coldplay's entire career was building upwardly to this stadium- and heart-filling anthem.
"Violet Colina" is as heavy every bit "Aye" and as visceral as the title rail with its siren-like guitars and cries of "If you love me won't you let me know?" "Strawberry Swing" follows equally its tearfully joyous counterpart. Fingerpicked guitar lines trip the light fantastic toe in a gorgeous choreography reminiscent of Radiohead's twinkling "Permit Downwardly" as Martin sings nostalgic lyrics describing memories of sitting and talking. Cellos and a unproblematic beat drive the song towards an audio-visual modest chord span before arriving at a euphoric outro. Overlapping, looping lyrics brilliantly create the sense of globe-trotting away equally Martin wistfully sings, "Without you it'due south a waste of fourth dimension."
Viva closes with the epic "Death and All His Friends." Martin trades verses of escape with a simple guitar solo over tender piano chords, nigh mumbling "Away over on the rooftops, let's get married." The track takes a similar course to "42," blossoming into a pianoforte and guitar driven jam before breaking through with an enormous climax. Here and throughout the album Coldplay takes several minutes to immerse usa in their soundscape without the distraction of lyrics. Martin takes a wise and ego-less step back and opts for subtlety over performance, a stark dissimilarity from every other Coldplay anthology that ironically comes across as more confident than ever.
At every turn Viva La Vida or Expiry and All Its Friends accomplishes exactly what information technology's going for. It's the audio of a band realizing their fullest potential by fixing the mistakes of their previous works, experimenting and trusting themselves. The album closes every bit it opens with a Hopkins instrumental, but this time Martin sings softly over the ambience, remarking "In the terminate we prevarication awake, and nosotros dream of making our escape." Vague themes of life, death, love and revolutions pigment Viva La Vida, simply in the end the album is merely music equally escapism, achieved by a refusal to falter in its aspirations. Such a comprehensive fulfilment of i of music's most universal goals is certainly worth celebrating.
Source: https://spectrumculture.com/2021/04/20/revisit-coldplay-viva-la-vida-or-death-and-all-his-friends/
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