Gah, I hate having to sound fanboyish to defend coldplay but it's an inevitable side effect of liking a band that critics hate. The only people that seem capable of giving them a fair go these days is Rolling Stone. If you can seriously listen to this album and give it 3 stars you have no business being a music critic. The two reviews posted here sounded melancholy to me..extremely so. Like they really did like it but were far to cool to bring themselves to admit to their readers, so they launched a couple of warheads about them still sounding like Coldplay (hello they are f*cking coldplay, of course they aren't going to sound completely different numbskull). However their sound has changed a lot, if you cannot recognise that this album is a huge seperation from the past three albums you are either, deaf, stupid or dead.