Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Coldplay gets galactic with airy ‘Music of the Spheres’
The last time Coldplay put out an album, it was like a warm embrace of Earth. This time, the British foursome has gone bigger — cosmically bigger.
“Music of the Spheres” is a spacy 12-track collection with waves of synth and airy melodies. The track “Infinity Sign” sounds like it was created inside a starburst, and “Biutyful” is a hit of ecstasy in musical form. This is an album that should be playing as astronauts gather on a slowly spinning space station for a galactic rave.
“It is a bit grander in its sound,” says lead singer Chris Martin. “The songs come first, but the picture frame of the title of ‘Music of the Spheres’ sort of easily said which songs might fit within it. But you’re always at the mercy of what songs decide to show up.”
The seeds to the new album were sown years ago, when the British band was finishing up their tour for “A Head Full of Dreams.” The pandemic scrambled their plans, leading to their last album, “Everyday Life,” a dense and complex work with words spoken or sung in Arabic, Spanish, Zulu and Igbo.
It was as introspective about humanity as the new one is lofty.
This time, the band teamed up with super-producer Max Martin, whom they credit with a less-is-more approach. He helped the songs breathe for a band known for rich orchestrations.
Five of the album’s 12 songs use emojis as titles, and it has what every successful album needs these days — namely, a collaboration with BTS, “My Universe.” There’s also the breakup song “Let Somebody Go” — with Selena Gomez — that is forgiving and loving.
Martin kept it a family affair, with writing credit on the Gomez song from daughter Apple Martin, who also supplies the intro to “Higher Power.” Son Moses Martin is credited with chorus vocals on “Humankind.”
“Apple gave me this amazing chord that I’d never thought of. So she’s on there,” Martin says. And he may be biased but he considers Moses a very talented singer: “So I often ask him to just come and make choruses sound better.”
The album ends with the 10-minute-plus “Coloratura,” a multi-suite voyage into the cosmos that’s a kind of flex from the band and represents a departure.
Coldplay aren’t the only artists to tap into the heavens in recent years, with Nick Jonas releasing “Spaceman,” Beck’s “Hyperspace” and Masked Wolf ’s “Astronaut in the Ocean.”
For Coldplay, using space offers them a chance to talk about ending man-made demarcations. From space, they note, the Earth is just water, mountains and trees.
Martin notes that for all the spaciness, it’s still a Coldplay collection — optimistic and hopeful. Talking about planets is a canvas to be talking about being human.
“It’s really another record about life as a human person, but given this freedom that comes when you pretend it’s about other creatures in other places,” he says.