Coldplay - Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends	by Brad Deck

Coldplay
Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends
(Universal)

While the mainstream music industry of late has seen success through the release of such albums as Usher’s Here I Stand and the Disney Machine’s Camp Rock Soundtrack, few have been able to provide a sensory experience beyond simply pleasing the ear. As if a gift from great-music heaven, along comes Coldplay’s newest disc to breathe some much-needed fresh air into the musical majority, and just in time—any more Reincarnation of Mariah Scary and I would have been at risk of self-medication.Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends (Capitol EMI), the fourth studio album from the super-successful Brit-rockers whom many tout as the second coming of U2, provides a listening experience that throws back to the days when artists made albums for the purpose of being listened to as an album, not on the shuffle settings of the iPod generation. This is not to say that each track includes a seamless segue into the next—although this is the case occasionally, most notably from “Viva La Vida” into “Violet Hill,” the excellent first singles released off the album. Each installation here follows the common themes of love, power, and destruction, from the lovelorn stance of “Yes” to the clever Beatles-lite “Strawberry Swing,” each piece feels unmistakably like part of a whole. The music of Viva La Vida is crafted with a massive-scale, cathedral-like sound—the music is lush and full in such a way that, as a first-time listener, I couldn’t get the stereo loud enough. I just wanted to wrap myself in it. This is a welcome departure from the impressive, yet trapped-in-indie-musicdom early Coldplay the world was introduced to with 2000’s Parachutes. It is terrific to see a group that successfully evolves from mellow, lyrics-driven material to the enormous and impeccable Viva La Vida experience. It’s no better than their earlier material, but it works for a band that has constantly been at the forefront of a changing music industry. Big, full music didn’t always work for Meatloaf; it does for Coldplay. Perhaps the cleverest of Viva La Vida’s numerous triumphs is the musically James Joyce-ian cyclical form that the album assumes: The disc’s final track ends with the same vibrating chord pattern that opens the album on its first track, “Life in Technicolor,” a bright way of inviting repeated listening sessions of what is certainly one of 2008’s most appropriately hyped musical offerings. Plus, anything that gets Mariah out of the five-disc changer at this point in my life is a welcome addition to any music library.

—brad deck