Previously, impressions were there if you looked for them, presumptions were free to be made, but the starting point was never very specific. Coldplay records gave the impression, for instance, that love was a straight-forward concept to grasp but a hard one to master, a universal theme, on top of which they nonsensically mulled that it was all yellow. You presumed subsequently, and also because of appearances, that its authors were not necessarily vastly experienced in the matters they addressed and, as one man said, probably wet the bed to boot. But they were eminently likable and had a frontman just far enough over on the interesting side of normal. It’s not impossible to understand why they were indulged, in droves. This is the first Coldplay album though that comes out and says very certain things about its authors. It’s like they can’t afford to be vague any longer, and they can’t.
In summary, what is most certain here is that Chris Martin has not gained any vast wealth of experience since we last met, in fact he’s possibly working with a reduced lexicon, using only what he knows will work for him. And that the band now have aspirations based on status as much as creativity. This is all about keeping up appearances. When the arenas and festival headline slots came to meet them off the back of ‘A Rush Of Blood To The Head’ they had little in the bag to justify the rendezvous. Two albums of capable melancholy with select peaks just weren’t enough to fill all that space convincingly, resulting in Chris Martin standing on his tip-toes and stretching past celebrity height requirements into a bit of a caricature to compensate. So this is, unsurprisingly, an album that only attempts to meet that failure head on and rack up a set of anthems that heat-seek their way straight to the back row of Crystal Palace Athletics Stadium.
Job done, on a superficial level at least. It is a record that exists in U2’s shadow, but it is a record that thinks big, and on some levels, imaginative. It’s a record influenced by sizable standards in British pop for the past 20 years, beyond their original remit but still comfortably within earshot. It evokes thoughts of not only U2, but The Police, Radiohead, James, even Simple Minds and Tears For Fears. The spirit of The Edge crackles through the jerky, repetitive, twinkling guitars and 80s reverb of ‘White Shadows’, ‘Talk’ and ‘Speed Of Sound’. Of course it lets itself down slightly by wandering through an expanded collection of influences with their eyes closed, without ever really trying to lift up, aside from Chris’ inexplicable desire to push the higher echelons of his voice where they won’t go naturally, like an indie Mariah Carey.
Nobody expected them to ever actually challenge the listener, and these lyrics (“what if you decide/that you don’t want me there by your side”, “you can climb a ladder up to the sun/or write a song that nobody has sung”, etc.) certainly ain’t going to crack the enigma code, they’re more ABC than X&Y. But there are songs on here that buoy along, staying afloat with some intuitive songwriting twists. ‘Square One’ is full of layered explorations, which it’s a shame they can’t maintain. ‘Fix You’ lifts well out of some mundane ‘Trouble’-esque ambling into an all too short, sky-reaching, almost gospel anthem, ‘The Hardest Part’ is his biggest vocal success, simplistic in its accomplishment, and ‘Swallowed By The Sea’ sees everything they’re aiming for come together just before the end, much like ‘Everything’s Not Lost’ off ‘Parachutes’. It’s another part of the puzzle in place, that’s for sure, but it will take a few more of those before they find the consistency that they need to match the picture that’s been drawn for them.