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1. (00:02:30) Coldplay - Life In Technicolor
2. (00:03:21) Coldplay - Cemeteries Of London
3. (00:03:55) Coldplay - Lost!
4. (00:03:57) Coldplay - 42
5. (00:06:51) Coldplay - Lovers In Japan / Reign Of Love
6. (00:07:07) Coldplay - Yes
7. (00:04:01) Coldplay - Viva La Vida
8. (00:03:43) Coldplay - Violet Hill
9. (00:04:10) Coldplay - Strawberry Swing
10. (00:06:19) Coldplay - Death And All His Friends
It\'s not often that the release of a CD is expected to have an impact on the economic fortunes of a global corporation.
But Coldplay are now a global brand, as well as a band, and as such the performance of their new album is crucial to the fortunes of their record company, EMI, which was bought a year ago by the private equity firm Terra Firma.
No doubt the bean-counters at EMI have now heard Viva La Vida (Spanish for \"long live life\", and if they have any musical sensibilities at all they should be breathing a huge sigh of relief, because Coldplay have just got bigger. Thanks in part to the band\'s apparently inexhaustible supply of fat, juicy, epic tunes, and thanks also to the production skills of Brian Eno, the man who broadened U2\'s horizons in the Eighties, they have surpassed even the widescreen glory of its predecessors.
Opening with a spine-tinglingly beautiful near-instrumental thing called Life in Technicolor, and using a newly expanded musical palette - strings, timpani, thrumming bass grooves - singer Chris Martin and his bandmates unleash a masterfully constructed sequence of emotion-drenched songs. There\'s a new sense of adventure in the songwriting, too, as tracks such as 42 and Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love suddenly veer off in unexpected directions. Rather less noticeable are the Latin American influences that are meant to have infused the band\'s songwriting after their travels to that continent: frankly, this is about as Latin American as Prokofiev.
The album\'s onslaught of instantly affecting and emotionally uncomplicated music will, of course, also be music to the ears of Coldplay cynics, the substantial wedge of doubters who, like the New York Times critic John Pareles writing in 2005, are dismayed by their \"calculated self-pity\" and meticulously
honed bombast.
But for those who are prepared to take Coldplay at face value, to presume unless there is evidence to the contrary that this an honest collection of songs from a band doing what they know best, Viva La Vida is a bright, warm, rich and strikingly memorable album.
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