The band worked closely with producer Brian Eno following their successful collaboration on Viva la Vida, the band's previous album. Just shut up and feel better.Mylo Xyloto (pronounced / ˈ m aɪ l oʊ ˈ z aɪ l ə t oʊ/ MY-loh ZY-lə-toh) is the fifth studio album by British rock band Coldplay, released in late October 2011. Or rather, better greeting cards than can be made of card stock. But looking for something terribly new and fresh on a Coldplay album is, to crib a proverb, asking for better bread than can be made of wheat. Other critics will have something piquant to say about the band's reliance on circular guitar hooks and unhealthy habit of beginning songs on an "oooh" vowel. The upshot is that Mylo Xyloto is surprisingly fun and listenable as all heck.
Writing a boring melody, however, remains firmly within his capacity.īut enough fussiness. Two months ago, I wrote that Chris Martin was incapable of writing an abstruse melody. "Up in Flames" sounds like a cover of an Usher B-side, and that's putting things rather nicely. "U.F.O" is a simple guitar melody that forgot the melody. "Major Minus" is mid-'90s Radiohead ten years after anybody stopped trying to do that sort of thing. (I've arleady expressed approval for the album's first two singles, "Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall" and "Paradise").īut mixed into these meticulously crafted, if inconsistently executed, songs are some inexplicable clunkers. The penultimate tune, "Don't Let It Break Your Heart," is a wall of sound etched with a simple, proficient melody. "Charlie Brown" launches with the kind of looping guitar hook that's custom-made to keep looping in your head after the track ends. Other songs are more in line with the band's vintage stadium ballads. "Hurts Like Heaven" is the fastest song Coldplay has ever written, and one of the best-a bright, skippy tune that seems more like Phoenix than the band that gave you "The Scientist." Rihanna sounds not entirely out of place in "Princess Of China," an R&B experiment that makes for a satisfying car jam, if a longshot club hit. The band's fifth studio album is their most unabashed pop performance, and it contains some legitimate surprises. "Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall": Awesome, if You Ignore the Lyrics Viva La Vida wisely pulled back from those indulgences and forced the band to write new songs rather than release the old chord progressions with different orchestras.Įvery Coldplay Single, Ranked From Worst to Best X&Y topped it off with angel choirs and synthy strings. Rush of Blood to the Head added more instruments. The band's debut, Parachutes, was an acoustic, autumnal gem, and, for many people, their finest record. Mylo Xyloto isn't a new Coldplay, just a new costume for the band's satisfying 4/4 melodies, arpeggio hooks, and uplift. They are writing for a customer that is interested in feelings, not words.
How else could one explain "every teardrop is a waterfall" (what?), or "I coulda been a princess, you'd be a king" (that's not how royal marriage works), "life goes on, it gets so heavy" (oh my God), and "even if your aims are shadows, still we never gonna part" (okay, now we're just marking time with syllables).Ĭoldplay can get away with greeting-card lyrics for the same reason that greeting cards can. Either their lyrics are come by in a manner that is ridiculous, or else they are random. Mylo, he said, is just "a great name." This interview offered an instructive, if not definitive, theory of Coldplay. In a recent interview, Chris Martin explained (maybe jokingly?) that the name "Xyloto" derives from his belief that music comes from everywhere, including one's feet, as if one had xylophone-toes, and so, Xylophone + Toe = Xyloto.
Mylo Xyloto is the band's newest album, and what a neon bundle of soothing Hallmarks it is. Then, ah, the satisfying turn: the symbols crash, the strings ignite. You thought that it was over, that everything was lost. You've tried your best but didn't succeed. Here is the first page, the acknowledgement of hardship. You will recognize the familiar components a Sonic Hallmark. Hall, but it has reached its apogee in the hands of the band Coldplay, which has, since its first album in 2000, conducted a massive international helicopter drop of Feel Better cards on music listeners of the world. The Hallmark Card was invented in 1923 by Joyce C.
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