Well, I've always quite liked Coldplay: Parachutes was sweet at the time, and I expect it still would be if I knew where my old tape of it was, and A Rush of Blood to the Head was genuinely good, the sound of a band which might be capable of touching greatness at least for moments at a time; I never got around to listening to X&Y, except once, several times over, in Irene's car on the way home from Blairgowrie in, erm, 2005 it must have been, but got the impression that it'd probably be fairly boring. So I had some hopes of Viva La Vida, and I was more than willing to go with the obvious stretching of their sound that they've attempted on it (I'd had a heads up from having heard the second half of "Yes" in jb hi-fi, which sounds like nothing so much as Coldplay doing that glossy Asobi Seksu-style shoegazer thing and hence nothing like anything of theirs that'd I'd heard before).
It starts promisingly; more or less instrumental opener "Life in Technicolour" leaves one feeling that the record could still go either way, but spacey follow-up "Cemeteries of London", complete with Cocteau Twins-esque jangle-and-shimmer, hits the spot, and next track "Lost!" is just as good, graced by a catchy synth and percussion line running through the song and some memorably epic, chiming guitar figures. After that, though, it's not exactly downhill, but it just doesn't quite fit together, whether they're trying somewhat incongruous song suites, copping licks from the Arcade Fire (both of the above on "Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love"), doing strange things with Spanish-sounding strings and lower-register Chris Martin singing (the first 'movement' of "Yes") or working a kind of Beatles meets the Verve seam ("Violet Hill" - and doing it pretty well at that). I can't put my finger on where it is that the album falls down - maybe, it just doesn't reach the great heights to which it so clearly aspires and, in so doing, spreads itself too thin. And there aren't really any out and out glorious moments or true standout songs...well, there's always next time. They still might have it in them.
