So I bought Viva La Vida by Coldpay. Rare that I buy an album without listening to it first. I find there are very few albums these days, aside from good jazz, old standards, classical, and tried and true bands such as Radiohead or The Killers where I buy based on the strength of the band’s reputation alone.

I bought Viva La Vida on the strength of the iPod commercials, the reviews I read, and the fact that X&Y was a great album from cover to cover. This time, however, the critics were wrong, with the exception of Viva La Vida and Violet Hill, the album is pretty vanilla. The songs are a little contrived and, for lack of a better way of explaining how I feel about the album, Chris Martin et al., tried too hard to top X&Y. The result was forced, apparently hurried, and in many instances putting too much reliance on an overused hook, much like movies that rely too much on their special effects.

For example, the song Lost! (not to be confused of the excellent television show of the same name) repeats the same tired theme over and over again without enough variation to make it interesting. In fact, I got sick of listening to it 30 seconds into the first time the track played.

With the execption of a couple of good hits that will spice up the soon-to-be-released-I’m-sure Greatest Hits, Viva La Vida is a very "ehhh…" effort on the part of Coldplay. After listening, Viva La Vida takes a step backwards to the level of Parachutes and reinforces that X&Y was an anomoly that is unlikey to be repeated by Coldplay any time soon.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 10:11 am and is filed under Hobbies, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.