Coldplay
A Head Full of Dreams

“Ghost Stories” was something incredible, unexpected from a properly pop band like Coldplay, something so extraordinary that it made us think we might never hear anything like it from them again. Especially because for a band now accustomed to filling stadiums and having the status of a money-making machine, such a shift surely involves many risks, and when you are used to bathing in gold, it's undeniable that you want to continue doing so. That courageous attempt to dare even at the cost of not being liked surely surprised everyone, mainly because it came right after the “easy” “Mylo Xyloto” that had definitively catapulted the band into the pop Olympus; who would have expected Coldplay to have the courage to make such a “dark” album potentially capable of losing them much popularity?

But perhaps we knew it was just an experiment. Here comes “A Head Full of Dreams” bringing them back to straightforward yet genuine pop-rock. The songs are fairly simple and direct but very well-crafted in terms of arrangements; probably the second shamelessly “chart-pop” album by the band after the much-criticized “Mylo Xyloto” (which I never found as abhorrent as many others) but clearly better than the latter; if “Mylo Xyloto” indeed showed a certain tendency to offer slightly flat arrangements shamelessly dictated by a desire to do business, this one instead has a much better attention to detail, especially regarding the guitar work. We know modern pop is often a hodgepodge of banality or even crap, but Coldplay shows they can do pop far more decently than many of their peers, and they deserve respect for this.

The work is quite varied and oscillates between pieces on the edge of funk, ballads, and songs that wink at r'n'b (a genre that in its modern sense has given us real crap, but as mentioned above, Coldplay does everything far more decently); the emphasis is on the guitar (which was quite in the background in the previous album), brilliant and bubbly throughout the album as well as on the piano, there is less emphasis on electronics compared to the previous album but electronic percussion is still used quite extensively here too.

The album opens with the title track; I had appreciated the house experiment of “A Sky Full of Stars” (even in this genre, they showed they could handle it where others had made real flops) and hoped that it wasn't just a small parenthesis… and here they are, after the psychedelic sounds of the intro, proposing a mix of disco and funk with a bubbly and flamboyant guitar and an intense and nocturnal melody, for a nice evening. “Birds” instead offers a fast-paced pop-rock characterized by good guitar work and a brilliant chorus, as well as effective orchestral inserts towards the end. The r'n'b incursion comes with “Hymn for the Weekend” featuring Beyoncé's voice; the choice to duet with a character from that musical trash which I will never stop criticizing (not doing so would be unobjective and not like a true music critic) appears rather debatable (even if the trash isn't Beyoncé herself but the way she approaches music, as someone with her voice could use her talents to do much better things) but although the piece is evidently ingratiating, the arrangement is not low quality, well guided by piano and guitar with intelligent brass inserts in the chorus.

The pace changes with “Everglow,” an excellent piano ballad supported by electronic percussion. Yet the pace changes again, here comes the lively “Adventure of a Lifetime,” with its lively funk led by its repetitive and hypnotic guitar riff. This is followed by another intense ballad, perhaps the most intense and emotional, “Fun” (sung with the Swedish Tove Lo), guided by melodic and dreamy guitars.

The pianistic interlude “Kaleidoscope” guides us toward the incredible atmosphere of “Army of One;” the choice of the powerful sound of an organ, supported by a rather hypnotic use of electronics, turns out to be incredibly effective, this organ creates an atmosphere absolutely unusual for a chart song; it's a sound that those who experience music as a simple pastime and not something to be listened to carefully always see rather badly, they ridicule it, how many times hearing one play do they say “what is this, are we in church?”… personally I find the sampled accordions by modern DJs much more laughable just because it's fashionable or to appear “original.” At the end of the track, there is even a hidden track that strikes with its electronic minimalism. There's then another intense and emotional ballad, “Amazing Day,” with its slow and relaxed pace that very much reminds of “Always in My Head.” After the psychedelic interlude “Colour Spectrum” which reprises the album intro, it closes with “Up&Up,” perhaps the only disappointing track on the album, a decidedly flat r'n'b, a gaudy maximum sound with a melody that doesn't prove very engaging, it really seems like the classic track that goes “whatever, who cares if the melody is subpar as long as the sound is chart-topping it will smash anyway”; the only flaw of an otherwise very good record.

I would have liked it more if “Ghost Stories” hadn't been just an experimental parenthesis and had instead opened a new phase, but I still can't help but enjoy the well-packaged pop-rock of this album.