Coldplay
Mylo Xyloto

The Coldplay return, the enfants bourgeois of indie (but when were they ever?) Anglo-Saxon rock. They return with the concept-album “Mylo Xyloto” (‘maɪləʊ ‘zaɪlətəʊ), and by continuously being told (accused?) that they are pop, they have ended up believing it for real.

In this latest work, they engage directly with pop pop(ism). Pop as in populist, not popular. The authentic contemporary pop, the chart-topping kind, synthetic, with autotune blaring for clarity’s sake. The pop of featuring, of plastic synths, of stuttering and dyslexic vocalizations (see: umbrella-ella-ella, roma-romma-ma, pa-pa-poker face). Essentially, it’s not the usual melodic soft-rock, the band's trademark, which, partly due to snobbery and partly due to sheer semantic ambivalence, we have always assimilated into a generic definition of pop.

Coldplay challenge Katy Perry and Lady Gaga on common ground, assisted by the usual Brian Eno, who, however, in this instance, has left the reins of production completely and is credited solely as co-author and the overarching influence on all the tracks (a curious and deleterious phonochemical reaction termed enoxification in the official booklet).

The idea of a concept album was deliciously anachronistic and seemed to hint at a progressive shift updated to the polished style of Chris Martin and company. No luck. “Mylo Xyloto” is a magniloquent, baroque, and unabashedly populist pop opera, where the qualitative result does not equate to the sum of its parts. And the new songs, tested in a long series of summer festivals worldwide, don't all hit the mark.

The fundamental issue is the over-production of the tracks, a recurring flaw in Coldplay's work. But in this case, they truly reach the extreme. Each song is an orgy of sounds, effects, effected sounds, and played effects that cancel each other out, creating a chaotic auditory experience, bordering on cacophony.

The opening title track is a brief and affected intro to an album with few lethal highs (Charlie Brown) and many lows, albeit decent (like the first two singles, Paradise and Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall).

Thus "Mylo Xyloto" starts at full speed: Hurts Like Heaven echoes the Cure of Just Like Heaven and the new wave bands of the '80s in general. It’s a simple, playful track, almost philological in its uncovered nods to the past. It matters little that musically it borders on self-plagiarism from the third section of 42, an excellent track from the previous Viva La Vida (2008).

We move on with Paradise, designated as the second single. Hip-hop veins and elaborate symphonic openings for a rather trivial track, with a lazy melody and no flair. The refrain consists of a repeated “Para-para-paradise” that resembles Lady Gaga or Rihanna (and we’ll get to that shortly...). A great chart success, needless to say.

Charlie Brown is the record's peak, a sort of remake of Life In Technicolor II from the Prospekt's March EP. An example of the refined pop(ular) music for which Coldplay are justly celebrated (Clocks, Speed Of Sound, Yellow, Viva La Vida) this time with declared influences from Arcade Fire.

Us Against The World, an intense ballad in the style of early Cohen, bare and minimal in live version, faces the overspreading over-production and emerges fairly decently.

M.M.I.X, an acronym, according to the band, for "Matt McGinn Is Awesome" (McGinn is one of the band's roadies), is a brief ambient instrumental that flows into the album's first single, Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall, which before Paradise and the Rihanna feature had alerted fans worldwide. A track that isn’t terrible, but insipid: a struggling melody, a keyboard riff transplanted wholesale, with prior authorization, from I Go To Rio (already sampled for the holiday village hit Ritmo de la noche). A derivative arrangement, a bland mixture of seasoned synth-pop and (gastric?) refluxes from Lovers In Japan, one of the best episodes of Viva La Vida. The irregular structure, lacking a true chorus, dissolves into dullness that accompanies the track to the blatant stadium vocalizations of the concluding part. In any case, a boon for summer arenas and dancefloors.

Major Minus provides a counterpoint, energetic and perfectly successful despite the over-production. A brief return to the epic atmospheres of X&Y when they still wanted to be U2. Elsewhere, beautiful solos from guitarist Jonny Buckland, inventive bass lines, and borrowings (quotes, shall we say) from Sympathy For The Devil by the Stones (the refrain’s ooh ooh).

U.F.O. is another acoustic interlude. Described by some, not unjustly, as a hyperglycemic Faust Arp, it is a gentle, unremarkable track paving the way for the subsequent Princess Of China featuring Rihanna (yes, really)...

What the hell were they thinking? A song with immense potential, far from predictable (the chorus, well, doesn’t return), devastating in live version, ends up being repeatedly ravished by inept and approximate production. The much-maligned Rihanna is bearable, although she ends up singing more than Martin. The omnipresent synth layer may not even annoy. But the rhythmic section is embarrassingly banal, and in a track that should precisely hinge on the effectiveness of the beat, it’s a real crime (even Umbrella was built on a great beat). And it is a crime to rob Buckland’s guitar of a potential killer riff. A synthetic piano, something even Magix Music Maker for Windows 98 wouldn’t use, tinkles in the background marking the time. It's clear this is an experiment: to recreate a pop hit in the lab with faded R'n'B influences. A failed experiment, at least in terms of quality.

The next track, Up In Flames, reeks of saccharine but is unexpectedly salvaged by minimal production, albeit not entirely effective.

A Hopeful Transmission, the third and final instrumental, revisits the title track theme over a delicate calypso rhythmic carpet and introduces the pleasant yet forgettable Don’t Let It Break Your Heart, a twin track of Every Teardrop that mimics the Killers of Mr. Brightside.

Up With The Birds is clearly divided into two segments: it starts softly with an (accredited) quote from Leonard Cohen’s Anthem and then opens into an airy ending fitting the title, with echoes of Paul McCartney’s Band On The Run. With this hyperuranic inspiration, Mylo Xyloto concludes.

It’s hard not to notice the absence of Moving To Mars, already released as a B-side of Every Teardrop and yet another B-side eclipsing the tracks of the actual albums, as has happened in Coldplay's past. This, unfortunately, speaks volumes about Chris Martin and company’s ability to discern, or that of their collaborators. Moving To Mars is intense and compelling, smoothly transitioning between the fragility of Parachutes and the stadium ballads of Fix You, a compendium of what the most melancholic Coldplay can produce. Unorthodox structure akin to early McCartney solo albums, echoes of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, and more than a few elective affinities with spacey-pop of Rocket Man (Elton John) and Space Oddity (Bowie). If a track like Moving To Mars ends up condemned to rot on the B-side of a single, published only in digital version, it's time to start worrying indeed.

We are far from the glory days of "A Rush Of Blood To The Head": perhaps after too much blood to the head, Coldplay are experiencing the early symptoms of a dangerous creative embolism.