Coldplay return with their most phantastic and ambitious album yet. The British band have gained an increasingly largeish reputation on the international stage in recent months, and with this release they complete their metamorphosis into exactly the sort of thing your Dad might listen to when picking you up from school were you still fifteen.

 

Vocalist Chris Martin is much more prominent here than on their previous outing Last Days Of Gravity. There are vocal tricks and soarings reminscent of their early shot to fame Yellow (for some reason missing from the digital reissue of Coldplay's debut A Flock Of Bleeps.) 

 

Martin displays a more out-there, almost psychedelic side with the noodly, Norfolk Spinning Into Place, replete with wallpaper. More involved and layered guitar sounds characterise Pound A Rhythm, where we witness instrument section Johnny Buckland and Guy Berryman nodding toward the exploration of Big Sounds. 

 

Closing track Tetris sounds just like the opening track of Viva la Vida,  underscoring a strange and delicious circularity that suggests we are all ultimately heading to exactly where we came from, dude, except with drums nicked from Bjorks's Hyperballad. 

 

There are moments of brilliance, but in order to notice them you need to make a conscious and controlled effort to make yourself forget that this is a band desperate to carve themselves a niche that they've not yet decided upon.

 

Coldplay are too Dad to be hip, too leftfield to be MTV, and too  MTV to be Leftfield. Or not MTV enough. I'm not sure, which is it again?