Send "Coldplay " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 You know that you’ve fully engrained yourself into the very fabric of modern pop culture when you find yourself getting sued. A lot.In the story mentioned at the top of this review, Coldplay’s frontman Chris Martin says that he was warned: as soon as he had a chart-topping single, the litigation would come, and, ‘lo and behold, following the group scoring a trans-Atlantic Number One with what is arguably their best song to this point, “Viva la Vida”, out comes rock guitarist Joe Satriani claiming that the band deliberately lifted a melody from his lesser-known track “If I Could Fly”. This suit raised a lot of eyebrows. After all, Coldplay stealing from another musician? That simply does not compute. It’d certainly be an odd move for them, given their reputation as being some of the nicest guys in all of rock music, but shortly after Satriani’s filing, another music icon—Cat Stevens—publicly decried the fact that the exact same song stole portions from his own “Foreigner Suite”. The result? The former case was settled out of court, the latter never fully materialized. Even as accusations of plagiarism rose once again following the summer release of Mylo Xyloto‘s lead single “Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall”, all of the faux-legal drama seemed to actually fuel anticipation for the band’s new album, which was already shaping up to be nothing less than a pop culture event (heck, they even managed to score a Rihanna cameo for it). After all, the group’s last disc was a key step in its development, finally jettisoning the piano recitals that weighed so heavily on the deservedly derided X&Y in exchange for an album filled with more textures, colors, and ideas than anything Coldplay had done prior. It was not a perfect disc, but Viva la Vida showed them reinventing themselves at just the right time, challenging themselves to do better instead of merely resting on their laurels (which producer Brian Eno should get some definite credit for). It wasn’t long before all of this hard work translated into Grammy wins, sold-out arena tours, and enough goodwill between artist and label for the band to put out a live album for free—which proved to be a much-appreciated move, as fans downloaded the album 3.5 million times in less than four days. Yet with all of those landmarks and milestones behind them, Mylo Xyloto does not carry the same level of expectations or pressure that Viva la Vida did. Following the critical beatdown the band received with X&Y (added with the well-known fact that Martin reads a lot of his reviews), the band pretty much had to re-invent themselves and that’s exactly what they did, going from melancholy songsmiths to arena-pop gods in the course of a single disc (well, two discs if you count the greatly underappreciated Prospekt’s March EP). Now, three years later, Mylo Xyloto proves to be a direct sequel to Viva la Vida, filled with the same sparkly keyboards, dramatic interludes, and sing-along choruses that made Viva such a hit. Although fans may be willing to embrace more of the same, the cold hard truth is that for all of its structural similarities, Mylo Xyloto brings absolutely nothing new to the table. Things start off grand enough, with a grand trio of top-notch songs: the synth-heavy “Hurts Like Heaven”, the grower of a single “Paradise”, and the fan-favorite-in-waiting “Charlie Brown”. Although these tracks share a lot of the same sonic territory, they absolutely crackle with energy, “Charlie Brown” taking the cake in terms of quality, as it shows the band having stumbled upon one of those great, instantly recognizable melodies that sounds better with each reiteration—who would’ve thought a guitar and a xylophone could sound so epic when paired together? “Paradise”, meanwhile, is clearly designed to ignite live shows with its ready-to-go crowd-chant of a chorus, the roots of which can be traced back to their holiday non-album single “Christmas Lights”. ...full text |
| Prettymuchamazing |
| Mylo Xyloto is a strange mix of sincere reflection and aesthetic pleasure. It marks the band’s fifth studio album, and the second in their quest to transform into an electronic-tinged pop outfit. But unlike the launching-off point, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, which only dabbled in this new direction, there is a conflict present in Mylo Xyloto occurring from a desire to combine old aspirations with new, splitting it down the middle, its lack of consistency making it feel as haphazard as a lucky dip. The first type of song on Mylo Xyloto is the dance-pop anthem. Many of these feel over produced, and in some cases the techniques used are inexplicable, lending nothing of value to the essence of the track. For instance, the intro to ‘Charlie Brown’, in which Chris Martin’s vocals are sped up to create the sound of a singing hamster, comes across as inadvertently comical. Disappointingly, even the current single, ‘Paradise’, falls short for the same reason – it does indeed have the most bombastic arrangement on the album, and the most memorable chorus, but it seems this directly leads Martin to take shortcuts with the lyrics. Aside from them being very thin on the ground, Martin is withholding his best efforts, slipping into comfortable clichés: “when she was just a girl, she expected the world but it flew away from her reach, so she ran away in her sleep”. ‘Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall’ also fails in its pop ambitions – it strives to replicate Black Eyed Peas’ ‘I Gotta Feeling’, but lacks the sufficient hook-heavy chorus to give it the same staying power. Instead, the song rests on guitarist Johnny Buckland’s over-complicated, jarring guitar riff. This is one of the biggest faults with Mylo Xyloto: if you want to take the dance-pop route, you need the dance-pop chorus. Two exceptions are ‘Hurts Like Heaven’ and ‘Princess of China’. In the former, the band manages to blend its alternative rock roots with its new dance-pop ambitions, and the result is a song as satisfyingly upbeat as The Cure’s ‘Close To Me’. ‘Princess of China’ is a pitch-perfect pop gem, lightening striking in the form of a guest vocal provided by the princess of pop, Rihanna. Coldplay provide a song that mimics her style expertly, blending the edginess of Jay Z’s ‘Run This Town’ with the wistfulness of Rihanna’s own ‘What’s My Name?’. In return, Rihanna lends the band her pop credentials and charismatic vocals, making the song both believable and catchy....full text |
| Guardian |
| Coldplay's followup to 2008's biggest-selling album is a curious thing. On the one hand, it aims for a certain ponderous gravitas. Mylo Xyloto is a concept album complete with a short filmic overture, interstitial instrumental pieces called things like A Hopeful Transmission, and recurring lyrical themes, set, as concept albums are legally obliged to be, in a futuristic dystopia: you can tell it's a futuristic dystopia because one of the interstitial instrumentals, M.M.I.X., is helpfully bedecked with the sound of burbling computers. An oppressive regime wields power: "They got one eye watching you, so be careful who it is you're talking to." But the kids – it literally talks about "the kids" – are rising up against them, inspired by the power of rock'n'roll: "I turn the music up, I got my records on/ From underneath the rubble sing a rebel song." Among the kids' ranks lurk the two curiously named lovers of the album's title. "The ending is very powerful, and about love conquering all," explained drummer Will Champion, clearly a stranger to the spoiler alert. Without wishing to join the motley crew of petitioners who've cried plagiarism at Coldplay over the years, the plot sounds a bit familiar. It's We Will Soft Rock You. Buy it from Buy the CD Coldplay Mylo Xyloto Parlophone 2011 Tell us what you think: Rate and review this album On the other hand, however, the album's sound involves a surprising embrace of chart pop. Whereas its predecessor took its title from a painting by Frida Kahlo, Mylo Xyloto has apparently been inspired by another leading surrealist, their work also characterised by the use of dramatic symbolism to communicate extremes of human suffering: Justin Bieber. "We have Justin Bieber and Adele to compete with and they're much younger than us. We have to have the energy to put as much effort into our work as they do," Chris Martin recently explained, a comment that rather leads you to picture agonised band meetings spent trying to work out how to equal the skyscraping artistic heights that will surely be scaled by Bieber's forthcoming album Under the Mistletoe, which not only features him doing that one about chestnuts roasting on an open fire, but also a version of Little Drummer Boy featuring Busta Rhymes. Lofty aspirations indeed, but then what is rock music if not an arena in which we dare to dream? As with the claims about the Brian Eno-driven avant-garde inclinations of Viva la Vida, you quickly get the feeling that Coldplay might have been laying it on a bit thick about the pop influence on Mylo Xyloto. A lot of it just sounds like standard-issue Coldplay, replete with echoing guitars, woah-oh choruses and vocals that signify high drama by slipping into falsetto. But when they do deploy the icy rave synthesisers and basslines of pop R&B amid the acoustic guitars and weepy strings – as on Paradise and Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall – it genuinely adds a bit of freshness to a formulaic sound. There's something faintly baffling about that, given that the icy rave synthesisers and basslines of pop R&B sound pretty formulaic themselves. Perhaps it has to do with the deftness with which Coldplay weave the electronics around their sound. It certainly never sounds awkward, even when Rihanna shows up on Princess of China, which might actually be the best thing here: a gleaming, tidily done bit of electro-pop. Or perhaps it's because whatever accusations you could heave at Coldplay, an inability to write hook-laden melodies isn't really among them, and a hook-laden melody is a movable feast. Mylo Xyloto's problem lies with the concept itself. For one thing, the storyline is flimsy. It doesn't stand a chance when pitted against Chris Martin's fearsome arsenal of cliches, generalities and motivational-poster platitudes: over the course of the album, the listener is left in no doubt that that streets aren't really paved with gold, that life goes on and that the sun must set to rise. Worse, it forces him to write in character, as a wild, feral youth who "stole a key, took a car downtown where the lost boys meet … we'll run riot," as he sings on Charlie Brown. You have to give him credit for stepping outside his comfort zone and playing against type. But equally, there's no getting around the fact that Chris Martin makes for a profoundly unconvincing feral youth: it feels like remaking The Wild One with Phillip Schofield in the lead role. Still, he might reasonably respond that no one buys a Coldplay album in the hope of finding brilliantly incisive lyrics, or indeed an accurate portrayal of untamable adolescent rebellion. They want other things, and they're all present and correct here. Despite Martin's worries, the chances of their vast fanbase suddenly defecting – to Justin Bieber or anyone else – seem pretty slender....full text |
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