How Beyonce got Coldplay to cheer up
Coldplay: A Head Full Of Dreams (Parlophone) Verdict: patchy, but some magical moments ★★★II
The last time we heard from Coldplay’s Chris Martin, he was singing lovelorn songs about the end of his ten-year marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow.
That was on last year’s Ghost Stories, an album of tepid ballads that lacked the arenasized hooks that propelled his band to global fame.
On the evidence of this sequel, Martin has put the split — or ‘conscious uncoupling’ as the estranged pair called it — behind him. A head Full Of Dreams is bright and energetic in all the places where Ghost Stories was maudlin and restrained. It’s too patchy to be hailed a classic, but it puts the band back on track.
Unusually for Coldplay, it features a stellar array of guests, with Beyonce, Noel Gallagher, Swedish singer Tove Lo and soul diva Merry Clayton all making appearances. With one eye on the U.S. market, there are even two snippets of sampled speech from Barack Obama.
As they showed on 2011’s Mylo Xyloto, Coldplay are happy to incorporate pop and dance into their music, and they travel further down that road here by collaborating with Norwegian producers Stargate, a duo who have worked with musical giants S Club 7 and Atomic Kitten.
That move won’t do a lot for the group’s credibility with their original, indie rockloving fans, but it shows a willingness to experiment that wasn’t apparent on their early albums, which followed the panoramic patterns honed by U2, Travis and Radiohead.
Not that the band have forgotten their rock roots. A head Full Of Dreams opens with the title track, which builds from an ambient start into a crowd-pleaser.
Tellingly, Coldplay did not tour at the time of Ghost Stories, but have announced a string of stadium shows on the back of this record.
Many of the band’s best songs have been dominated by guitarist Jonny Buckland, and the musician — who sounded subdued on Ghost Stories — is back in the thick of things, adding jangling chords to Birds and a funky feel to Adventure Of A Lifetime.
Those looking for lyrical heft will be disappointed. ‘I’m going to miss you, I know,’ croons Martin on piano number everglow, in what could be a reference to his broken marriage, while Army Of One finds the 38-year-old admitting: ‘I’ve been around the world looking for someone like you. ’ Of the guests, Tove Lo is sultry on the ballad Fun, but more could have been made of Beyonce’s presence on hymn Fo r The Weekend.
The R&B star sings yelping, chant-like backing vocals, but isn’t given the larger platform Rihanna was afforded on her 2011 Coldplay duet Princess Of China.
The album ends on a high, though, with the seven-minute Up & Up bolstered by a guitar solo from Gallagher.
As the seventh studio album of a career that marks its 20th anniversary next year, A head Full Of Dreams doesn’t lay down a marker of true greatness in the style of The Beatles’ Revolver or Springsteen’s Born In The USA — both seventh albums too. But after the cheerless Ghost Stories, it is, at least, the sound of a group who are enjoying themselves again.