Obama, Beyoncé and daughter, Gwyneth Paltrow and Noel Gallagher join Coldplay for their “farewell” album. It’s star-studded for sure but it's also pop painting by numbers with all the hallmarks of typical - if not classic - Coldplay
With uncommon haste for a massive rock/pop act, Coldplay follow up last year’s crestfallen Ghost Stories with an album fit to burst with happiness, vitality and joie de vivre. Rock’s new man Chris Martin has emerged from the wreckage of his break-up with Gwyneth Paltrow as an even newer man - reborn in the light of self-determination and moving ever forward, a bit like a sensitive pop shark.
What this means lyrically - and lyrics were never Martin’s strong point - is that A Head Full of Dreams is all about “miracles at work”; there are imprecations to “c’mon! Start over”; and there are joyful exclamations that “life is a dream and love is a drug.”
In fact, just in case you were in any doubt about just how damn happy Chris baby really is these days, there is a song called Fun and another song called Up & Up, which features Noel Gallagher, a man who once might have excoriated Coldplay as posh boy rockers, dusting off the old riff from Champagne Supernova.
So Martin still sounds like a trendy Vicar in a Tory stronghold or an over-excited leader in a zany jumper at an eighties youth club. Musically, Coldplay take no real leaps of imagination either: the production, from Norwegian duo Stargate and regular collaborator Rik Simpson, is bejewelled and glittering. The default setting of widescreen exotic shimmers and waves of mass euphoria are all here. As are Jonny Buckland’s Edge on Benylin guitar chimes and chirps.
The jump out songs are Hymn for the Weekend, featuring Beyoncé’s honeyed vocals, and the propulsive new single Adventure of a Lifetime, which pulses with a real dance floor rush and includes one of Buckland's finest guitar figures in an album full of spiralling riffs and short solo bursts. This being Coldplay, there is also bit of silly affectation on the otherwise perfectly serviceable Birds and Chris still uses his elongated falsetto “ooohhh-ooohhhs” and “ahhh-ahhhhs” a lot and, yes, he also still sounds like he has a head cold.
Martin is at his best on the album’s most tender moment, Army of One, a lovely electro dream of a song echoing with hand claps and subtle drumming. We are, however, brought straight back down to earth with the dreary piano plod of Afterglow, which features lyrics from Gwyneth Paltrow and sounds like a leftover from Ghost Stories. Kaleidoscope is a real curio - essentially a two-minute sound collage featuring a line from Afghani poet Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi and a snippet of President Obama singing Amazing Grace at the funeral of a Charleston shooting victim, Clementa Pinckney. Kaleidoscope is a thought-provoking and moving moment on an album of platitudes and half-formed aspirations.
Along with Obama, and Gwyneth’s lyrical input, Martin has invited just about everyone to party with Coldplay on A Head Full of Dreams. His current girlfriend, English actress Annabelle Wallis, and Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s kid, Blue Ivy, crop up for backing vocals on Up & Up and it’s one of the best songs here, locking into a very decent groove before gospel harmonies a la Primal Scream push Coldplay into something that may even pass for genuine euphoria.
As the title suggests, A Head Full of Dreams is an explosion of Technicolor-drenched fantasy and possibility but gauche sentiments and a hidebound refusal to change the musical script means Coldplay rarely do anything to truly surprise or delight. It sounds like this is as far as Martin’s choir can go without some kind of radical rethink.
Like their avowed heroes U2 back in 1989, maybe they’re off “to dream it all up all over again”. Not a bad idea because if this is, indeed, their last album Coldplay do not offer either a sense of an ending or a new beginning.
Alan Corr
Tracklisting: A Head Full of Dreams - Birds - Hymn for the Weekend - Everglow - Adventure of a Lifetime - Fun" (featuring Tove Lo) - Kaleidoscope - Army of One (includes hidden track X Marks the Spot) - Amazing Day - Colour Spectrum - Up&Up
