preparation for the 2008 coup Viva La
Vida or Death and All His Friends, for
which they called in the legendary Brian
Eno for a crack at the big music he coaxed
out of U2 20 years prior as the Dublin
quartet carried the banner for stern, sen-
timental Irish rock and roll around the
world. 2011’s Mylo Xyloto leaned too far
into electronics, and 2014’s Ghost Sto-
ries overcorrected for the prior album’s
cloying pep by veering into hushed (and
sporadically sort of effective) folktronica.
A year later, A Head Full of Dreams reca-
librated again, blending the folk, pop,
electronic, and post-punk sounds of the
preceding albums into a hodgepodge
that never gelled, quality Beyoncé fea-
ture notwithstanding.
That was supposed to be the end of
the band. Coldplay serenaded the world
one last time and released a live album
cataloguing shows from the end of the
2017 tour along with a career-spanning
documentary by longtime friend of the
band Mat Whitecross. The relative quiet
since then was broken last month with
the surprise announcement of a double
album called Everyday Life. It’s a hard
reset, and the band’s best release since
2008’s Prospekt’s March, which offered
a solid collection of songs that didn’t
make Viva. Like David Gordon Green’s
2018 Halloween sequel, the new album
supposes all of the weird stuff that went
down between the band’s heyday and
today never happened and gets back
to the business of shattering hearts.
“Church,” the new album’s first proper
song, carries Coldplay back to the scene
of the reassuring Parachutes opener,
“Don’t Panic.” “Panic” sought solace in
darkness, and “Church” returns to the
idea with a twist, blurring lines between
romantic and religious love, like Peter
Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.”
Everyday Life revisits Coldplay’s back
catalogue, recentering their sound in
gentle acoustic guitars, evocative piano
melodies, and wistful, lilting vocals. But
it inverts the old albums’ introversion.
They’re not reminding us that “we live
in a beautiful world.” They’re shining
a light on the ugly parts. Everyday Life
is troubled by the divisive state of world
affairs but also anxious to be a secu-
rity blanket under which we abide the
worst. “Trouble in Town” speaks somberly
and dramatically to
racial unrest (“AndI get
no shelter / AndI get
no peace / And I just
ge t more police”),swell-
ing to a chilling cre-
scendo as audiofrom
EVERYDAY LIFE
COLDPLAY.
PARLOPHONE.
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