The band Coldplay has spent its career practicing one mood, over and over, and getting very good at conjuring it. The mood in question involves heroic uplift, or possibly hearts full to bursting with vague positive emotion. There’s something a bit triumphalist or even militaristic about it recall the drum-banging and uniforms of “Viva la Vida,” or the band’s rather bizarre and ongoing interest in revolutionaries. One tends to imagine some kind of parade where people throw thousands of flowers and miles of ticker tape out of apartment windows at soldiers returning victoriously from a confrontation that wasn’t all that violent. The sound is equal parts pomp and tenderness. It feels a bit stirring, but in the end it’s mostly comforting; the band has managed to combine two things that should be at cross purposes.
Related: Vulture Imagines the Plot of Coldplay’s Rock-Opera Album, Mylo Xyloto
