Coldplay's Viva La Vida: Everything To Everyone

Who's going to like Coldplay's new record? Everyone who liked their previous records.

Given everything contained within, it's fitting that Coldplay decided to saddle their new album with two seemingly disparate titles (it's called Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, in case you weren't aware). Because if anything, it's the most bipolar thing they've ever done.

Lyrically, it's obsessed with the duality of, well, everything, full of ruminations on life and death, corporeal pleasure and spiritual anguish, the emptiness of wealth and the reverence of poverty (all sung by a millionaire rock star with an Academy Award-winning wife, of course). Musically, it's Sagrada Familia-massive and quark-microscopic, all strings and church bells one moment, tiny tack piano and shimmery joules of synthesizer the next (and surprisingly organic for an album produced by an electronic legend like Brian Eno).

And thematically, it's hyper-focused on both the celebration of living and the bloody business of revolution, two yin/yang ideals that sort of make sense as one unified concept when you think about it long enough. In keeping with that (non) ideal, the album takes its title from a sunny Frida Kahlo painting, yet features an overwrought Eugène Delacroix work on the cover.

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