MY LAST Coldplay review having been somewhat pretentious and inconclusive, I’ll do my best to let this one finish the story (much as Coldplay hopes Prospekt’s March will finish theirs). Viva la Vida, as previously noted, was a pleasant collection of forced diversity, a map of little inroads into territory not really explored. On the whole, it worked: what at first seemed farcical (“Lovers in Japan”) proved as affecting as intended, and the most out-of-place bits (“Chinese Sleep Chant”) proved repeatedly listenable. Never mind that there was no brilliant theory behind it all—its sole motivating value was a vague ball of “Coldplay needs to be better.” It wasn’t better than Coldplay’s best, but certainly a last-minute righting of the so-called sinking ship.

Coldplay
Prospekt's March
Rating: 6.8/10
Capitol, 2008

The full version of “Life in Technicolor” is almost as good as any other Coldplay song since X&Y, but the one-and-a-half-minute instrumental version that made the real album is ten times better (here, Martin shows us some of the restraint involved in the intense process of making Viva la Vida). More hacking would have been necessary to make “Lost+”—essentially Jay-Z rapping over ten seconds of the completely unaltered original—worth including. Every post-album EP contains some indulgent remix, but five listens to the “Osaka Sun Mix” of “Lovers in Japan,” and I couldn’t hear any difference. (Drums are a little louder and sound more frenetic? Maybe they screwed with some EQs? Remix?)

But only twenty percent of the running time is wasted by indulgent rehash, which leaves another six songs worth talking about, little sideshows that for once don’t have the Coldplay b-side feel (see: “Sleeping Sun,” “Brothers & Sisters,” etc.) “Glass of Water” is shouting rocker that sounds barely post-Rush of Blood, with the unbloated, clockwork instruments (lean distortion, sharp acoustic guitar, simple piano) still intact. Had more of X&Y sounded like this, it’s difficult to imagine that album getting its bad rap. (A Martinism alert is, however, in order: watch the last lines for something about “your whole life past going nowhere fast.”) “Rainy Day” has the British feel of “Cemeteries of London” and “Violet Hill,” though it’s the leanest of the bunch, simultaneously the least scripted and most tightly reigned of the Viva collection. Take the strings from “Viva la Vida” and the cacophonous percussion from “Lost,” and you’ve essentially got “Rainy Day.”

The rest is a bit more typical, if not bad. “Prospekt’s March/Poppyfields” sounds like a three-minute intro to an X&Y track, a hushed strings-and-gentle-arpeggios ballad that has Chris Martin continuing his affair with fish clichés (this time its “Don’t you wish life was as simple/As fish swimming ‘round in a barrel when you’ve got the gun). “Now My Feet Won’t Touch the Ground” is, almost strum by strum, the same song as “Til Kingdom Come,” with a Viva-esque steel drum tap accompanying the solo guitar.

I’ve mostly summed it up without offering much criticism, but that’s for a reason. If you need good criticism to make you listen to Coldplay, you might as well not waste your time. The only intelligent thing that comes to mind is how badly Coldplay does conceptual (the whole “Prospekt” thing? There’s hints it was Chris Martin’s name for the imaginary ghost in his while he wrote Viva la Vida.) They’re great at making life sound good (see the chorus of “Rainy Day” and the brass outro of “Now My Feet…”), but will never be the ones to chronicle its epochs.