Viva La Vida: our 2 cents
We just listened to Coldplay’s fourth studio album, “Viva La Vida”, from first sound to final. We’ll tell you upfront: it was an experience.
The adjective we have to best ascribe to this album is lush: “Viva La Vida” feels to us like a collection of poems, collaged and layered with a mixture of unfamiliar, but beautiful, sounds. And to us, this is both what the album is all about, and what makes the album what it is: the music, the sounds, the instruments, with the vocals taking not a back seat, but perhaps a passenger seat. The album begins with instrumental track Life in Technicolor, setting the tone for the entire album: and it’s quite literally the tone, for the rest of the album is painted in vibrant colors by the lush, mythical sounds. Color and art are established as part of this album right from the get go: the album takes it’s title from a Frida Kahlo painting, and the cover art is “La Liberté guidant le peuple” (Liberty Leading the People) a painting by Eugene Delacroix.
The album flows beautifully. From the gray Cemeteries of London, to the powerful, stomping blue sounds of Lost! (42 is green to us, Lovers in Japan, red, Yes, yellow). Many of the tracks on the album do a kind of peculiar thing: halfway through the song, the tempo, energy, and general feel of the song completely changes. (It happens on 42, Lovers in Japan, Yes, and Death and All His Friends.) For all these bipolar tracks, the sounds are completely different, and it’s all just testament to this album as an experiment in painting sounds. Yes is one of our favorite tracks from the album, creaking and dynamic. Viva La Vida and Violet Hill follow, the lead singles from the album, but are not in our opinions, the album’s highlights.
Strawberry Swing follows, our favorite track from the album. It’s just beautiful, simple and (again) lush. On it Martin gorgeously croons “without you, it’s a waste of time.” We love that. The album concludes with Death and All His Friends, an a capella-becomes soft piano-becomes power guitar track for the ages. It’s great.
10 tracks. We can say confidently that if we were to ever release an album (that’d be the day!), it would have 10 tracks. Simple, and classy, and classic.
“Viva La Vida” is an album that inherently feels like art: we know what you’re thinking, of course we’re gushing over this album, it’s Coldplay for gods sake. But we were more than prepared to dispose of the album. It’s good, though, great even; full of lush and gorgeous sounds. It’s an album full of sounds.
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Viva La Vida and Violet Hill were the songs of Van 4 in NOLA =P