Difficult_Kind

It's very, very odd that you don't like Violet Hill for being too chart friendly, yet your two favourite songs are FAR more chart-friendly than VH. VLV and Lost! are by a long margin the most commercial songs on the album.

I really think they should just get it into stores as soon as possible. It's all over the net now and even streaming officially, so why not?

You can stream it here in the US legally... http://www.iheartmusic.com/cc-common/news/sections/special/coldplay.html

The little "Download" thing you can do with RealPlayer doesn't work on this player. Grrr!

42 is "horrible"? Are you serious??? Bloody hell!

Hey, you can stream the full album *legally* in the US only from this link: http://www.iheartmusic.com/cc-common/news/sections/special/coldplay.html

Probably some weird copyright issue!

I think that at this point they should just try to get the album into stores asap, even if it's before the planned release dates.

I do agree with you guys about reviewing something based on a listening party. That really is unacceptable. Albums take numerous listens and a lot of time to get a full opinion on. I mean I'm saying now that it hasn't blown me away, but who knows a few weeks down the line.

I find it a bit annoying that so many people in here refuse to accept that not everyone will love this album. I love Coldplay and very much enjoy their stuff, but I still think that this album isn't all that fantastic. It's about a 3/5 album for me too. Contrary to what's been said by many, that does NOT mean I'm "tone deaf" or "crazy". I'm not one of those critics who just hates Coldplay for the sake of it. I'm a fan! That doesn't mean I have to praise and worship everything they do.

Cool! Each to their own. I guess it'd be pretty boring if we all agreed all the time!

Personally, the only review I trust is my own. I do happen to agree with both of the above reviews though.

I know. Talk about hitting the nail on the head!

Andy Gill's review in The Independent. I completely agree with it I'm afraid, especially the final line and the bit about the incessant repetition. Coldplay: Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends 3 out of 5 Reviewed by Andy Gill Coldplay's X&Y, they've since explained, was the final part of a trilogy – a claim some might consider a cunning defence against accusations that they're a one-trick pony mining a stadium-filling formula to death. Whichever way one takes it, it leaves the globe-girdling anthem-mongers with quite a mountain to climb on Viva La Vida. Their Sherpa Tensing on this tough ascent is Brian Eno, sonic enabler to the stars, doubtless drafted in for his success in keeping U2 more or less on their game, and famed for his idiosyncratic approach to the producer's job (on one occasion, he suggested Bono and his chums take a holiday). But it's hard to hear any specifically Eno-esque cast to the sound of Viva La Vida, save for the soaring synth pad behind the tack-piano march of "Lovers In Japan". And one suspects his hand may have been behind the oddly contradictory effect gained by layering tiny tendrils of backward guitar behind the Bo Diddley beat of "Strawberry Swing", which is the most notable thing about the track: certainly, whenever it slips into passages of strummed acoustic guitar, the song all but dissolves away to nothing. The album opens in a shimmer of keyboards with "Life In Technicolor", building over two minutes of dulcimer and drums before giving way to "Cemeteries of London", a faux-folk piece built from wisps of U2-ish guitar and piano, whipped along by galloping drums. A similarly bustling clatter of dohl drums and offbeat handclaps powers "Lost!", though the uncharacteristic industry disguises what is a typical Coldplay lyrical trope ("Just because I'm losing doesn't mean I'm lost"). It's the first hint that, whatever their intentions, Coldplay will struggle to shake off their old ways; the second comes hot on its heels with "42", a multi-sectioned piece about death ("Those who are dead are not dead, they're just living in my head"). "Viva La Vida" itself likewise cleaves to a Coldplay staple, in this case that of devising a simple, memorable melody line and ramming it home through endless repetition. It adopts an oddly chipper tone for a song about a former leader fallen on hard times, but makes an apt pairing with the cantering battle fantasy "Violet Hill", yet another example, with "Cemeteries of London", "42" and "Death and All His Friends", of the album's fascination with death. The purported passing of their former style, however, has been greatly exaggerated, though whether the attempt here to chart a new musical course will lead anywhere as imposing remains to be heard. This is pretty average stuff. Pick of the album:'Strawberry Swing', '42', 'Lost!' And The Guardian review... Coldplay, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends *** (Parlophone) Alexis Petridis No less a musical authority than Guy Hands has called Viva la Vida "the most anticipated album of the year". For once, it's hard to argue with the new EMI boss: the anticipation comes not just as a result of Coldplay's preceding vast success, but the sense that they finally might be about to offer something different from the increasingly windy and lachrymose stadium ballads that fuelled it. Rock's most celebrated blue-sky thinker, Brian Eno, is on board. There are intimations of artistic insurrection and tumult. The album's title may sound like something you'd find on the cocktail menu on TGI Friday, but it comes from a painting by surrealist Frida Kahlo. The cover features Delacroix's romantic depiction of the spirit of revolution, Liberty Leading the People Over the Barricades. Meanwhile, singer Chris Martin recently stormed out of a puff-piece newspaper interview, declaring "we don't care if we sell a million less records". This parting shot proves telling about the actual scale of reinvention that Vida la Vida offers. Announcing that you don't care if you sell a million fewer records sounds bullish, until you realise that X&Y sold 10m copies. Selling a million fewer than that hardly constitutes throwing commercial considerations to the wind in favour of a bafflingly abstruse artistic statement. Notice is thus served that we may not be dealing with The Faust Tapes here. Such thoughts are underlined by opener Life In Technicolor. It starts as a Kraftwerkish instrumental, before the arrival of drums, guitars and a woah-oh chorus suitable for singing en masse in a sports stadium. Indeed, there are moments during Viva la Vida where you feel impelled to take Coldplay aside and explain to them that there's more to reinventing your sound than calling Brian Eno, coming up with some enigmatic song titles and telling people you've reinvented your sound: you are actually supposed to change your music as well. There's certainly a wider sonic palette on offer - a jerkily funky beat powering Cemeteries of London, a vaguely African-sounding guitar line on Strawberry Swing - but it's discreet shading. Coldplay's constituent elements remain intact: mid-tempo songs, echoing guitars, piano ballads that surge into bittersweet anthemics, falsetto vocals. The words continue to deal only in the most general of generalities - "Just be patient and don't worry", "You've got to soldier on". The messages are weighty and inarguable (42, for example, has sussed out that when people die, their loved ones remember them), but the fear that Martin could let fly with a line about tomorrow being the first day of the rest of your life looms ever-present. Lyrics aside, Viva la Vida fixes most of the glaring problems with 2005's X&Y, simply by eschewing verse-chorus structures in favour of something more episodic. Uncoupling them from the standard framework allows Chris Martin's melodies to shine: even his loudest detractor could hardly deny his way with a tune, as evidenced here by 42 and Lovers in Japan. Perhaps more importantly, the songs seem less thuddingly predictable than Fix You or What If? Confronted with a title track so clearly destined to get huge crowds punching the air, you might say that the results are more subtle only in the same way that being slapped across the face is more subtle than being smashed over the head with a breezeblock. But there's no doubt it seems noticeably less craven in its attempt to tug the world's heartstrings. One might argue that Viva la Vida's mild tinkering with the formula represents a failure of imagination: perhaps it's hard to think outside the box when the box is the size of the Las Vegas MGM Grand Garden Arena. Equally, however, there's a genuine conviction about its contents, a huge advance both on its predecessor and their legion of imitators. Coldplay remain thunderingly uncool, a state of affairs you suspect couldn't be altered whether they were being produced by Brian Eno, Brian Wilson or Brian Cant: I have a terrible feeling that 42 is a reference to the meaning of life in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, thus raising the prospect that their next album might include songs called This Is An Ex-Parrot and I Invented It in Camberwell and It Looks Like a Carrot. At its best, however, Viva la Vida poses an interesting question: do you need to be cool or experimental if you can write songs that carry the listener along regardless of their reservations - indeed, almost despite them?

That's exactly what I thought too...at first. Now I don't think that at all. "X&Y" has more highlights and genuinely gorgeous songs than "VLA". "'VLV" is probably a little more consistent, but as someone already said, it just feels more "flat" or something. Overthought and passionless.

Yeah that's exactly it. It's by no means a bad album, but I was just expecting something more exhilarating and powerful. It's much too...dare I say it...dull, in places. It's early days, and we've yet to hear the whole thing in proper CD quality sound, but right now I'd actually rank it 4th out of 4 albums.

Haha! Sad but true. They really ruined it with the dreadful production. What on earth were they thinking of with those clunky Timabland-lite beats? Also, the song doesn't really go anywhere. You think it's going to build to something, but it actually doesn't. A huge disappointment. The acoustic version sounded so promising.

It's clearly a b-side. What on earth is it doing on the album?

I find this track a complete snooze(no pun intended). It's so pointless and wispy.

I have to admit that with each listen to the album, I actually like it less and less. I thought it sounded exciting and fascinating on first few listens, but that has really worn off now. There are just too many unremarkable, repetitive and uninteresting tracks on it IMO. There are the gems of course, but there's about as much "filler" as there was on "X&Y". I don't see any dramatic leap in quality to be honest. They really messed up "Lost!" with the clunky Timbaland-lite production. So yeah...right now I'm pretty disappointed unfortunately.

Not sure if it's THE best ever, but I definitely think it's one of the best things they've ever done! It's absolutely sublime.

The glamour!! Hehe. ;)

Hehe. Whereabouts are you in Ireland?

Tell me about! I still can't quite get over the 'randomness' of the whole thing!

Hehe! NO! ;)