Coldplay - Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends POLL

"Church" is very much the same widescreen late 90s downtempo-influenced-by-"world music" feeling as Ray of Light and i love it

this album is excellent

unfortunately Chris "Lib Dem" Martin is now cancelled

the first side is really wonderful the whole way through, even the lyrics of "daddy" can't make me dislike it. it's a shame nothing else is quite as adventurous as "arabesque" for them but as i said before "church" and "trouble in town" are highlights too

the second side is much more inconsistent though, "cry cry cry" is horribly cloying and a terrible use of that sample, it's the only track i skip. "bani adam" is an interlude in form but longer than a lot of the proper songs and both parts of it are fairly insubstantial. "eko" and "old friends" are gorgeous folk ballads at least, some of their very prettiest. "orphans" is one of the few concessions to radio and arenas but evokes the wide open desert feeling of joshua tree-era u2 in a really nice way, especially the verse. the chorus is a little clunky but as far as big coldplay arena anthems go i really like it. the other one on this album, "champion of the world" is plodding and forgettable though

i think they get away with the earnest prettiness of tracks like "daddy" here because they don't aim for any sort of big arena-rock emotional catharsis climax in the way they usually would. they're happy just to let the songs be extremely pretty and float along (and really they're recorded so gorgeously here!)

Best Coldplay album in 11 years. Looks like EDM and loudness war is finally toned down a good bit.

Heard "Champion of the World" today and liked it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWUV5-frRU4

they've gone prog?

paris from king has a writing credit on it

haha they have bts on their single out this week that's a very goofy move

They played City Winery in NYC last night, which holds about 500 people max.

That must be a thing as bands ease back into live performance. Metallica played here last night at a venue that holds a thousand max.