By Declan Roberts (@DeclanMR)
Before we get started, I am not the biggest Coldplay fan. Yes, when I was younger I liked them, but I liked S Club 7 when I was younger too, so I was hardly a bastion of good taste.
We join Coldplay in a mid-life crisis. After a sorry showing with Ghost Stories and an average effort on Mylo Xyloto, Coldplay needed to rustle up something special with A Head Full of Dreams.
They haven’t.
Their familiar flower of life album covers stare out of the shelves and pages of all shops and magazine advertisements, offering nothing new. There’s an air of re-hash about the whole outing, with Mylo Xyloto its closest and most obvious sibling; ‘Adventure of a Lifetime’ is a shallow echo of ‘Princess of China’, for example.
This stuff is churned out. ‘Birds’, ‘Army of One’ and god awful Beyonce collaboration ‘Hymn for the Weekend’ cause an unpleasant taste of bile in the mouth. Without the emotional support and guidance of a friend, one of Coldplay’s brainwashed masses, I may have been unable to find any redeeming light in their latest effort. ‘Up&Up’ holds the only respite, and that is only because two thirds of it is instrumental.
If you have to buy your parents a CD this Christmas, don’t buy them this. A Head Full Of Dreams will give them an ear full of shit; musical, colourful shit that £10 cannot justify.
