Review Summary: You're holding in your hands the two halves of my heart
On True Love, Chris Martin sorrowfully implores 'tell me you love me, if you don't then lie'. The feeling of not being good enough for somebody, of being desperate for a person not to leave you even if you know the spark that was there originally has gone, is prevalent throughout this album. The fact that the lyrical concepts on this album are the darkest they've ever been on a Coldplay record reflect Martin's separation from Gwyneth Paltrow, but even sorrow hasn't inspired him to write the record I always believed they had in them.
Now, the band haven't made anything 'amazing' since 2000's remarkably consistent Parachutes, but their singles have been my staple Coldplay diet for a while now. Even where the full length albums fail, the band's ear for melody generally prevails above their more bland tracks when it comes to single selection. Hence songs like piano epic Clocks, with its bizarre lyricism hinting at a concept album never brought into fruition, and the dazzling array of singles from the otherwise very uninteresting X&Y. The band keep adding extra bells and whistles to their music, be it electric guitars (wholly absent here) or electronics, but their more stripped-back sound on their debut is something they've yet to emulate or attempt to better.
After the unashamedly poppy Mylo Xyloto, something like Midnight was a little surprising. With a submerged sound making the guitars a glittering pendulum between the thin walls of synth clouding the somber vocals that for once really suit the anguished, abandoned theme of the band's traditional material. It's a great song with awesome harmonies, and the subtlety of the keyboards this time round don't overwhelm the instruments, which for the first time in a while sound like the entire band is involved. That being said, it's obvious from Magic that Coldplay are not in any way interested in being dynamic interesting or lyrically deep. Any attempt to make something out of the over-simplified love metaphors Martin is expelling alarmingly easily in this track results instead in you focusing on the unappealing drums, plastic and rooted firmly in place by the rhythmic restrictions of almost all these songs. You could say this is the closest they've come to sounding like they did fourteen years ago, but in reality this is as artificial and painfully orchestrated as its predecessor was.
And even the most dedicated fan will find it hard to see past something like A Sky Full of Stars, a song in which Avicii's contributions manage to surprise no one and bore everyone with a predictable EDM beat. Martin sings wonderfully, but with such a lazy, terribly placed song sitting amongst more sleep-inducing fare, it's an uncomfortable reminder that the band are capable not only of cheesy Radiohead-core but David Guetta aping euro-trash, all on an album they claim to be their darkest. This album is a major chore, largely because half the songs elapse far beyond what any Coldplay song should, and the ones that are an appropriate length simply don't satisfy in the way a genuinely great song from Martin and co. should. The vocals are on point and the lyrics have massive potential when removed from being the centre of attention and swamped in vocoders and such, but songs like True Love make this album so intolerable it's impossible to see this as an improvement.
