With the absence of U2 this year, the accolade for “Biggest Band in the World” falls to Alternative rockers/composers of bedwetting music Coldplay. Like U2, Coldplay have polarised opinion in music circles; many love their music for being part easy on the ears, part stadium filling, anthemic rock that’s just alternative enough to avoid the dark pit of pop music and popular enough to garner frequent radio play.
Just as many however hate them for being boring, uninspiring, plain lucky for arriving at a time when Radiohead halved their fanbase and with each album faltering to deliver the endless hype going into it.
Me personally; I really like Coldplay and, like many, I went into the bizarrely titled Mylo Xyloto with high hopes that once again, Chris Martin and his ensemble would deliver something magnificent and awe-inspiring; justifying why they are the biggest band in the world (for this year anyway).
Sadly, this isn’t Coldplay’s year, no matter how much they try.
There’s a fundamental flaw with Mylo Xyloto and it’s made all the more embarrassing with the fact that Martin has stated that Mylo Xyloto is a concept album and that flaw is; the album doesn’t flow very well. The best example that I can think of with similar problems is Muse’s The Resistance (ironically their fifth album too) which tried to fit everything in one neat package, but in the end felt congested and over-indulgent without really having a consistent theme.
It’s the same for Mylo Xyloto which can’t decide if it wants to try and be a respectable, ballad driven record or mindless poppy fun. It starts off loud and proud with real opening number Hurts Like Heaven (there’s a quick intro prior called Mylo Xyloto which may as well have been added to start of this one, but anyway) which, despite being decent, fails to capture the intrigue the song delivered in it’s live iterations.
I loved following track Paradise despite the world joining hands in saying it was atrocious. Here, it fits really well at the start and I still stand by it being great with its infectious chorus, handclap infused bridge and lovely piano outro; even if it’s basically Viva la Vida meets anything U2 threw out during the Zooropa/Pop days.
Stand-out song Charlie Brown is pure insanity-driven fun with loud synths and shouty, sing-a-long moments. Ok, so the shouty, sing-a-long lyrics are non-sensical (even for a Coldplay song), but it’s a stereotypical Coldplay masterclass in making a song built for stadiums. Think Lovers in Japan but bigger and more poppy and you get this wonderful gem.
So from here; I thought I had a decent idea of what to expect from the next ten songs; fun, loud but interesting pop with Eno infused synths to deliver a bombastic package. But Charlie Brown is where the consistency ends and where things get a lot more jumbled.
Us Against the World is the first sign of trouble which decides to go back into a time-machine to the Parachutes/A Rush of Blood to the Headera of intimate, acoustic sounds with some electronic soundscapes. It starts off well but screams out for a big ending but just fades out into nothing.
This intimacy sporadically and frustratingly appears every couple of songs; like the album is taking a breather because it can’t keep going at the same tempo. The best example of this is the transition between U.F.O; a short, sweet but ultimately pointless acoustic interlude which then goes into Princess of China; a middle of the road, synthy, fuzzy but ultimately pointless collaboration with Rihanna who doesn’t really offer anything new to the song other than having naturally more feminine vocals than Martin.
While this intimacy has worked and can work on the album with something like Up in Flames, which feels isolated and tragic in it’s piano driven beauty; album closer Up with the Birds is generally poor and doesn’t match the images of future love and intrigue, nor any other closing track on a Coldplay album.
It’s a shame because when it works; Mylo Xyloto is a carnival ride; it’s loud, colourful, evokes a strange sense of happiness and leaves you buzzing. When it doesn’t; it’s like a ghost train which looks amazing from the outside, but when you’re actually on the thing, it keeps stopping and starting until the end and you can’t tell if the missing pieces are supposed to be missing or if someone got confused on the way and hoped no one would notice.
It’s a disappointing, confused and over-indulgent album which can’t decide which direction to go in. It has stand-out tracks but it has more than a fairshare of pointless interludes, mindless filler tracks and ideas which start off well but ultimately go no-where.
It will sell millions, but for the first time since discovering this band, just before X&Y cemented their legacy; I’m in unison with the naysayers:
Do they really deserve it?
6/10
H
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