This is the biggest cash-in I’ve ever heard (well, maybe not the biggest, but it's up there...), and frankly more evidence of Coldplay’s sheer mediocrity. I have a love-hate relationship with Coldplay, in that I keep buying their albums but am then constantly disappointed, so I have to cheer myself up, so I listen to one of their albums…it’s a vicious cycle that ultimately ends in the ingestion of Cake, just to get those songs out of my head. I’ll concede that Coldplay knows how to write tunes, sure, but they’re so goddamn formulaic and pretty and BORING that I can’t imagine why anyone would care. There’s nothing edgy or remotely different about this band…and yet I buy their albums anyway. If someone can explain that to me, go crazy.
And now for the actual review…
Life In Technicolor II is not actually a new song, but rather a continuation of the first Life In Technicolor (Life In Technicolor I?). There are some average lyrics, more sweeping strings, blah blah blah YAWN. Another disappointment: Lovers In Japan (Osaka Sun Remix), which as far as I can tell is exactly the same as the first Lovers In Japan, except without the Reign of Love hidden track. Plus, those of us who pre-ordered Viva La Vida from iTunes already have Lovers In Japan (Acoustic Version), so now I have THREE versions of a frankly mediocre song (plus a music video from Prospekt’s March), which is extremely frustrating.
Rainy Day, with its spiky strings and jumpy, jumbled vocals, is a decent cut, as is Glass of Water, a by-the-books big Coldplay arena-filler (although major props for writing the chorus in 7/4) . Both would have been great tracks for the original album, but perhaps that would have been too risky (gasp!) for Coldplay. Other than these two tracks, there is NOTHING here. Lost+ contains an amusing and vaguely entertaining rap interlude from Jay-Z, but what pisses me off the most is that it’s the EXACT SAME TRACK as Lost! (a great song nonetheless). If Coldplay were a real band, they would have given the track to Jay-Z to remix instead of just splicing in an awkward verse. Even the music video is the same, for Christ’s sake! This is a great idea with a pretty average result.
Postcards From Far Away is a waste of forty-eight seconds of your life (it’s just a little bit of twinkly piano…separating...little bits of twinkly piano…), and Prospekt’s March/Poppyfields and Now My Feet Won’t Touch The Ground are just plain weird.
The Bottom Line: When you boil down this record, there are only actually 5 new songs (well, really 4, because Postcards… should not ever count as a song) out of 8. And, unless I missed something, that’s not enough to charge eight dollars for, even if you’re Coldplay.
Download: Glass of Water, Lost+, Rainy Day
Rating: 4/10
mood: busy busy
tunes: use somebody – kings of leon – only by the night
