Also: 3D, the Chainsmokers, the past…
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[5.56]
Hannah Jocelyn: A stunning return to form, especially after the low point of “Something Just Like This.” There’s the intimacy of pre-Parachutes EPs, the massive band-driven crescendos of Rush of Blood to Viva La Vida, and the neon-pop of Mylo Xyloto onwards. It’s not the first time they’ve referenced Massive Attack, nor the first time they’ve anchored a song with a circular piano riff. “AICTAIY” is a great encapsulation of Coldplay’s career up to this point, and only the underwritten, clunky lyrics and crushed mastering keep this from their upper tier.
[8]
Micha Cavaseno: Ironically, the year of Coldplay’s most shameless grab for commercial relevance is the year they say fuck it and divorce themselves from their naked earnestness. It’s a satisfying mix of their usual pomp, once that piano bangs them to life and they go into U2 on the Horizon mode, and the ponderous navel-gazing of the intro that makes such a swift rise so effective. It’s a simple formula, but frankly, Coldplay have worked so hard at constantly trying to prove they’re so much more than their basic influences that it’s fair enough that they want to do the old trick they used to do well.
[6]
Alex Clifton: I hear echoes of “High Speed” and “Clocks” here, and I’m not sure if that’s good (Coldplay returning to their roots!) or bad (recycling the same goddamn chords for the past 17 years!) Still, that’s the Coldplay I fell in love with back in 2004, and I much prefer this style over their club thumpers. Between Chris Martin’s slurred vocals (where’s the crispness we had on Parachutes, where you could identify every word?) and the jam-session build that abruptly ends, this is middle-of-the-road in their discography. But it’s the least annoyed I’ve been with a Coldplay song since 2011, which is really saying something.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: The opening rhythm is reminiscent of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop,” so I’m immediately predisposed to like this. Then Chris Martin actually shows restraint vocally, making this a darker-shaded, more nighttime-listening Coldplay single — at least until about three minutes in. Then he starts bellowing, but there’s at least a warm choir to counterbalance some of his vocal. They sure know how to screw up their own songs, don’t they?
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: Everything here, from chords to percussion to piano timing, suggests a live-band version of “Teardrop.” Which is fine — given House I’m surprised someone hadn’t ripped it off sooner. But “Teardrop” had Liz Fraser. Coldplay has a dude with stitched-together lips and a head cold.
[5]
Alfred Soto: Dudes, David Bowie’s “Lazarus” already boasted this kind of poignant high end bass line strumming, and no one goes to Coldplay for mumbled hooks over echo, cooed like a pigeon flying over the Grand Canyon.
[4]
Iain Mew: I used to listen quite a bit to a CD compilation I made of all the B-sides from Coldplay’s singles from Parachutes and before. Intimacy and atmosphere pushed even more to the fore than the album, it had a lot of great songs to be enveloped in. That probably makes me among both the most generous and harshest possible listeners for their new attempt to recapture that sound. It means that the first half of the song still gives me an unmistakable warm feeling, even though the vocal processing adds a little more distance than even “Oceans” did not so long ago. It also means that I have no patience at all when it turns into exploding “Clocks.”
[6]
Ryo Miyauchi: Languid music and underwater reverb on Chris Martin’s voice, this is a sonar blip away from being a sibling to “Oceans” from Ghost Stories. Never mind the attempts at deep metaphors; who else other than Martin reaches for a pair of shoes to express separation? All that nonsense fades away once he gets to shouting straightforward platitudes such as the title at the top of his lungs.
[6]
Claire Biddles: Deeply unfashionable as it may be to admit, I still carry a torch for early Coldplay. I don’t think I was the only melancholy child who treasured the lilting misery of Parachutes in the alternative music abyss of the pre-Strokes early 2000s. In fact, I know I wasn’t, because (even more unfashionably) I joined the band’s message board in 2002, resulting in a lifelong friendship with TSJ’s very own Iain Mew, who wrote a series of thoughtful posts about the subject for One Week One Band. I don’t care much for anything they’ve done since their debut, but — as we all do, as selfish music consumers — I sometimes wonder what they’d sound like if they’d built their subsequent sound around the things I liked most about them; if they hadn’t felt the need to always be bombastic, and instead had allowed their more speculative, thoughtful moments room to breathe and grow. The first two and a half minutes of “All I Can Think About Is You” are like a parallel world where my daydreams have miraculously become real — it’s untreated and unpolished and quite lovely, reminding me both of Radiohead’s “The Tourist” and of that song’s advice: “Hey man, slow down!” But just as it’s leading us somewhere interesting, they lose their confidence, overcompensate, and it turns into an overproduced rehash of “Clocks.” It’s rare that I wish a band would go smaller and quieter, but I can’t help but think Coldplay still have unspent potential hidden behind the primary colours and capital letters.
[5]