Album Review: Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends (4.5/5)

Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends isn't just a title Coldplay chose because they couldn't make up their minds. It's a choice: Live life or join death. While that's not terribly provocative as rock album themes go, Viva La Vida is the most experimental we've heard Coldplay yet. Gone is that requisite surging pop number ("Yellow," "Clocks," "Speed of Sound") and the stadium anthem you're supposed to lift your swaying lighter (or rather cellphone) aloft to ("The Scientist" or "Fix You").

Instead there's a willingness to depart--not dramatically--but with baby steps toward something different. Revered producer Brian Eno is along for the journey this time, and although his presence might make you think Coldplay wants to encroach even further onto U2 territory, he actually gets them to experiment with longer instrumental sections and unusual instrumentation. Over the course of 10 tracks and 13 songs (3 tracks are "hidden") Coldplay delivers the sort of lovely pop/rock we've come to expect from them tweaked with little surprises here and there.

They open this time with an instrumental, "Life in Technicolor" which kicks off with a mix of layered keyboards before throwing in a middle eastern instrument, and them amping up the band with a hopeful sound. Not a classic, but a good start. "Cemeteries of London" goes for a pensive sound, turning up the guitar echo and hollow-sounding keyboard effects. Together these tracks quickly establish the album's life and death theme, play off of it both in their titles and in their contrasting styles.

"Lost!" is the album's first great track. This sounds like a typical great Coldplay track, enhanced by an unusual percussion section. Church organ and keyboard effects drive the melody, with guitar used sparingly under the chorus. There's a little piano here too, but it's so buried in the mix as to be barely audible until near the end. It gets its due on "42," a song that starts as a dark piano-and-strings ballad and then suddenly morphs into harder-hitting guitar rock. There's something really interesting going on with the guitars here, which I like. Then--bam--the song speeds up and the piano comes back to drive the upbeat finale. It's a great contrast, which I recommend listening to with the volume turned way up. Is this Coldplay's bid to create a mini "Bohemian Rhapsody?" The more I listen to this track, the more I love it. Chris Martin claims its called "42" because that's his favorite number, but I'm not sure I believe him.

"Lovers in Japan" keeps the tempo and mood upbeat, a steady blend of drums and keyboards. The piano's unusual sound comes courtesy of the band modify its hammers with tacks to create a "tack piano." "Reign of Love," the hidden track that follows, strikes me as something to close an album with. It's just mellow piano and Chris, not much to it, and not very exciting.

"Yes" is an interesting track. Chris sings in a lower register, which is refreshing. Violins and other stringed instruments are used prominently, but in a more Western fashion. "Chinese Sleep Chant," is the best of the hidden songs. Chris is barely audible, buried in the mix of reverberated guitars and keyboards.

Then come the album's two singles, which are the albums two best songs and provide quite a contrast. While "Viva la Vida" at first sounds like any big Coldplay song--"Clocks" or "Speed of Sound"--listen to the instruments and you can tell this is something quite different. First off there are no drums or guitar, the key ingredients in most rock music. Yet the song moves along quite propulsively, featuring the most prominent string section of any Coldplay song. Keyboard and chimes round out the song. It is upbeat and epic.

Then there's "Violet Hill," brilliantly dark and compact. The pounding melody features raspy guitar, piano, and Chris Martin singing about who knows what--politics? ("When the future's architectured by a carnival of idiots on show you'd better lie low"), poverty? ("Clearly I remember from they windows they were watching while we froze down below") Love? ("I took my love down to Violet Hill, there we sat in snow, all that time she was silent still, so if you love me won't you let me know?"). It's a lovely song and I like it a lot, although it took awhile to win me over.

"Strawberry Swing" has a simple hand-clap beat and a staccatic string section that nicely underpins acoustic guitar during the bridge, providing a harmonizing melody against the keyboards at the end. This isn't your typical Coldplay song, and it's quite good. Producer Brian Eno makes a brief guest appearance here, whispering "that's a bit fast" at the beginning, referring to the tempo.

"Death and All His Friends" isn't typical either, although it may seem so it first. It opens sweetly with Chris singing softly over piano, then there's some gentle electric guitar, but then the music surges and the band erupts for the last bit. It's a surprisingly optimistic sound for a song called "Death and All His Friends." The least interesting song on the album is the last. I don't see much point to "The Escapist" beyond providing a soft closing--it's just a pleasant, but not particularly melodious arrangement of keyboard layers taken from the opening track.

While this album lacks as many obvious hits, which X&Y and A Rush of Blood to the Head had in abundance, it makes up for it with experimentation. This is Coldplay's most challenging album to date, turning their back on the big guitar and piano stadium fillers that have made them a name up to this point, but retaining their sensibility for crafting lovely pop melodies and infusing their music with optimism. Even if it falls short of the grandeur of their last two albums, the band should be applauded for trying something different. As dark as some of these songs are at times, many of them resolve with upbeat codas, reinforcing that when faced with the choice between giving in to death or struggling with life, Coldplay chooses life. If you don't like that, go listen to Radiohead for awhile.

Best: Viva la Vida, Violet Hill, 42, Strawberry Swing, Yes, Lost!, Chinese Sleep Chant, Death and All His Friends