Is it just me, or does it sound like he's singing "open flames"? :|

 

Anyway, I like this a lot more than ETIAW and Paradise, but it's still not that great in my opinion. The lyrics are repetitive and I really don't like Chris Martin's falsetto in this song. I much prefer acoustic and simple songs like this rather than the heavily synthesized crap they've come out with lately though.

Even Charlie Brown, plain as it is, is still a fine song. Us Against The World is arguably better than UIF and potentially the best song on the album. Who knows.

I really, really like Up In Flames as we've heard it so far, but part of me is wondering what my standards are now anyway. However, if it really stays that simple on record and isn't mucked up by overproduction, I think it'll end up being one of my favorites on the record. Let's hope they have that much sense.

I really like Up In Flames, especially if you compare it with ETIAW and Paradise

I listened to Paradise again. It's actually really good up until 2:20ish, where chris starts singing higher and the OOHHHs come in.

 

I also made the mistake of listening to Major Minus. This song is just really fucking bad!

It's pleasant-sounding enough but pretty boring tbh. The fact I can say this mediocre song is a huge improvement over recent efforts really speaks volumes about how far Coldplay has fallen. The song sounds like a substandard 4 Minute Warning: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLe7-UzjZAA]Radiohead 4 minute warning (live) - YouTube[/ame]

Up In Flames - Coldplay ACL Live 9/15/11 - World Debut - YouTube[/url]

 

A lot of people seem to like it, still too generic pop for my liking.

 

Oh God, Chris' voice is so terrible. I had to stop after that failed attempt at hitting the high A-flat spot on. I tried to tell myself that my ridiculously high live music standards would not be met, but nooooo, I had to take a listen, anyway.

 

I'm just gonna be patient and wait for the studio album to come out. Yep.

I love 4 Minute Warning

I enjoy it, a lot. :) I think it's my 2nd favourite LP5 song. Us Against The World is the first.

Chris's voice has always been grittier and less delicate live, so I'm not surprised that an entire song where he wails in falsetto (keep in mind that he's had several years to refine Fix You, so maybe this will be similar) sounds unrefined live at first.

 

Also, since this thread is brimming with too much positivity right now, here's the part where I post YouTube comments and we mock them:

Coldplay is getting better and better, they're improving even when I though it wasn't posible for them to be more perfect.

 

I prefer Paradise. This one sounds a bit like all the other slow songs they do.

 

Coldplay is incapable of making a bad song. Their b sides are better than most bands award winning albums. They always evolve yet always have coldplay! I LOVE etiaw and paradise which has taken so much heat. Those songs are so different and brilliant! I don't understand criticism of them at all, and never will!

 

First off, this song is incredible! Secondly, every song they have played up to this point is amazing! I am shocked how many people hate paradise and etiaw. Those songs are insane! The riffs, bass lines, melodies and harmonies.

 

So how about those amazing Paradise and Teardrop riffs and basslines, huh? (seriously, no disrespect to Guy Berryman, but I can't think of a single memorable Coldplay bassline)

Chris's voice has always been grittier and less delicate live, so I'm not surprised that an entire song where he wails in falsetto (keep in mind that he's had several years to refine Fix You, so maybe this will be similar) sounds unrefined live at first.

 

Also, since this thread is brimming with too much positivity right now, here's the part where I post YouTube comments and we mock them:

Coldplay is getting better and better, they're improving even when I though it wasn't posible for them to be more perfect.

 

I prefer Paradise. This one sounds a bit like all the other slow songs they do.

 

Coldplay is incapable of making a bad song. Their b sides are better than most bands award winning albums. They always evolve yet always have coldplay! I LOVE etiaw and paradise which has taken so much heat. Those songs are so different and brilliant! I don't understand criticism of them at all, and never will!

 

First off, this song is incredible! Secondly, every song they have played up to this point is amazing! I am shocked how many people hate paradise and etiaw. Those songs are insane! The riffs, bass lines, melodies and harmonies.

 

So how about those amazing Paradise and Teardrop riffs and basslines, huh? (seriously, no disrespect to Guy Berryman, but I can't think of a single memorable Coldplay bassline)

 

So we're all supposed to criticise everything they do then.

Exactly. I felt pretty dirty praising "Up in Flames" last night.

Guy might not have the most interesting job, but he's always been my favorite of the four.

Radiohead 4 minute warning (live) - YouTube[/url]

 

4 Minute Warning has to be one of my favorite Radiohead songs, but...I just don't see much similarity :uhoh:. Maybe the beat?

 

It reminds me most of a mix of older Coldplay songs, which is comforting these days.

Guy might not have the most interesting job, but he's always been my favorite of the four.

 

He's like the Ed O'Brien of the group. You see him on the stage and half the time, you're wondering if he's actually doing anything. Sometimes I even forget that there's a bass player on stage. But it's all ok because fangirls think he's hot :)

 

 

 

 

(I kid about Ed O"Brien btw - I love the atmosphere he adds to Radiohead songs)

I'm not going to listen to any more Coldplay songs until the album.

 

Mainly because Chris really is not a great live singer, and I don't want my opinion already set before hearing the perfected studio version.

Mainly because Chris really is not a great live singer, and I don't want my opinion already set before hearing the perfected studio version.

 

He used to be once upon a time... and then something happened. :( For example, he was so great at singing Politik in the past and now, it just sound pitchy.

Singing classes happened.

Para-Para-Para-Pants sounded like another band had taken the stage at ACL between Charlie Brown and Clocks :sick:

My husband just got back from Home Depot and told me Paradise came on while he was looking for a furnace filter.

 

'he dreamed of home-home-home depot'...

Coldplay release fifth album Mylo Xyloto on 24 October 24. Here, Niall Doherty gives his first impressions of Chris Martin and co's much-awaited return.

 

Mylo Xyloto

The title track of Coldplay's fifth album is the 40-second soundscape piece that the band began their Glastonbury headline slot with - not to be confused with the Back To The Future theme tune that blared out as they walked on. The instrumentation is pure Eno, the producer's imprint all over the cascading glockenspiels and washed-out guitar lines as the song bleeds into Hurts Like Heaven.

 

Hurts Like Heaven

The first track proper sets the tone for the rest of Mylo Xyloto, bursting in with an up'n'at'em urgency. The melodies, like the title, are a nod to the '80s heroes they so successfully channeled on A Rush Of Blood To The Head, the Cure and Echo And The Bunnymen's influence looming large as Chris Martin sings like he's in a hurry; "I'm strangled with the feeling that my life isn't mine" sings the most brilliantly neurotic man in music, Jonny Buckland's guitars still set to the cosmic sparkle sound of the opener. The chorus - "you use your heart as a weapon/And it hurts like heaven" - is as upliftingly bittersweet as Robert Smith & co.'s best pop songs, whilst the "whoa oh oh" bridge provides the record's first stadium-singalong moment.

 

Paradise

The second single to be released from the album sounds much better in the context of the record - a mid-tempo bridge between the relative surge of Hurts Like Heaven and Charlie Brown. And, if the fuzzy stomp of those hip hop synths jarred with your impression of Coldplay(well, they wouldn't work on Yellow, would they?), then they make perfect sense on Mylo Xyloto as a whole, revisited on the first thirty seconds of Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall and punctuating the Rihanna-assisted hollers of Princess Of China.

 

Charlie Brown

The standout from their headline summer slots sounds even monumental on record; Charlie Brown is one of the best things Coldplay have done. Jonny Buckland's hypnotic guitar lines lead the way, the band channeling Joshua Tree-era, the heady holler-alongs of Arcade Fire and a teeny bit of Sigur Ros stargazing as the song launches into its adrenaline-veined climax. Whilst the music is wonderfully overblown, Chris Martin keeps the vocals cool and calculated, singing of "taking the car downtown to where the lost boys meet", which might be about nipping to Spar on Hampstead High St But probably isn't

 

Us Against The World

Forever destined to be known as The One They Fucked Up At Glasto, Us Against The World begins with delayed patterns of guitar and a lone church organ, before stripping back to just Chris Martin and his acoustic. Its approach sums up what makes Mylo Xyloto ticks; its production is far from stripped-down, but, unlike the bloated X&Y and the do-you-know-what-it-is-yet-cos-we-don't mishmash of Viva La Vida, everything here is a servant to the melody. And, five tracks in, the melodies are some of their best; here, Chris Martin whispers "slow it down" as an orchestral swell builds around him. Just when you think it's going to embark on a Fix You-esque outro, it finishes, perfectly.

 

M.M.I.X

Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall is deigned to be a sufficient enough centre-piece of the album that it warrants its own intro - so, M.M.I.X, a sort of sister to the opening track, is a minute-long electronica drone. It's almost as if Brian Eno had something to do with this record or something.

 

Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall

Much like the best songs on Mylo Xyloto, Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall is dominated by Jonny Buckland's intricate, epic guitars - Buckland takes a starring role on their fifth album. It's his playing that seems to summon the best from his colleagues - Martin has rarely sung better than he does when Every Teardrop... cascades into its hug-yer-mate outro, Guy Berryman and Will Champion now resembling a rhythm section driving the songs rather than filling in the gaps.

 

Major Minus

Beginning with the jagged strum of a detuned acoustic guitar, Major Minus sounds like the bitter flipside of God Put A Smile On Your Face. Chris Martin's vocals sounding like they were recorded in a seedy phonebox, the "they got one eye on the road/And one on you" chorus delivered amidst guitar shards and a kinetic percussive groove. One of the most immediate songs on the album, and the most darkly playful thing they've done since Daylight.

 

U.F.O

Harking back to the title track of their debut album, U.F.O is a melancholic interlude, Chris Martin's acoustic plucks joined by the swirl of strings halfway through, resembling a more saccharine take on Radiohead's Faust Arp. The escapism-themed lyrics ("let's fly/split the sky...") explain the title, just in case you were wondering if Chris Martin was about to grow a bed and start picketing outside Area 51 with Robbie Williams.

 

Princess Of China

It would've been ridiculous to suggest in the giddy two-hour heyday of stool-rock that its latest pretenders would belining up the biggest r'n'b star on the planet for a duet on their record - but Coldplay are a long way from 2001, accordingly, Rihanna's appearance on Princess Of China doesn't jar like it would if she popped up on the chorus of Don't Panic. They make her feel at home; Princess Of China is decorated with r'n'b flourishes from the syncopated march of the drums to the bulldozing synths. Jonny Buckland's guitar takes a backseat - well, it's Rihanna, you would wouldn't you? - but this offers a tantalizing glimpse of where Coldplay could go next.

 

Up In Flames

Beginning with a reverbed, Massive Attack-esque drum sample before a plaintive piano motif and Chris Martin's hand-on-heart vocals, Up In Flames puts Coldplay back in well-traversed ballad territory. The chorus - Martin repeating the title over and over in an echo-chamber falsetto - suggests that the days of autopilot Coldplay are over, beautifully simple and using the melody as its dynamic. Again, just when you think it might take off, it ends. Coldplay have learned to make their point a little more succinctly. Stunning.

 

A Hopeful Transmission

The third interlude of the album veers from the electronic thrum of Mylo Xyloto and M.X.I.X, instead opting for a lush string coda, underpinned by what sounds like, umm, someone playing the spoons in the background.

 

Don't Let It Break Your Heart

A sister-track to Every Teardrop... in the way its driven by stop-start rhythm of the drums and the way Martin forms an indelible hook out of the wall of sound sonic avalanches around him, Don't Let It Break Your Heart is one of Mylo Xyloto's most straightforward songs, a precursor, ala A Rush Of Blood's A Whisper, before a final bombastic blow-out?

 

Up With The Birds

Well, not really no, because final song Up With The Birds avoids the clichéd overblown ending, its brilliance, like much of Mylo Xyloto, hidden within the places the songs don't go. "The birds, they sang at break of day/Start again, I hear them say" sings Chris Martin over stark piano chords at the beginning, before an almost overwhelming burst of strings come to the fore. Then, the whole thing stops and starts again, before strummed acoustic guitars and gentle, almost lackadaisically-played drums usher the album to a peaceful, calming close.

Review has me excited about UFO and UWTB! I liked Paradise and ETIAW so the comparison of ETIAW and DLIBYH doesnt bother me. I expect great things and after reading the review still expect Charlie Brown to be my favorite. It's been my favorite out of all new ones.

Cold-who?

 

 

...not even a bit excited or looking forward to this release.

"Martin has rarely sung better than he does when Every Teardrop... cascades into its hug-yer-mate outro..."

 

Just based on that, I find this review to be somewhat questionable. Then he had to go make small comparisons to Arcade Fire and Sigur Rós. WAT. :|

 

I don't know. I'll see what I think when I listen to it.

I joined the forum in excitement for LP5 and ETIAW, and it all just seems really wavering right now. I'm sure it'll be good, just not THAT good.

 

I keep forgetting that Paradise is part of this album too. And that it's representative of the overall sound. :|