Even with thousands of people singing it back, it still doesn’t detract from its monolithic awfulness. ‘Something Just Like This’, the garish collaboration with EDM idiots The Chainsmokers that sounds like the death rattle of culture itself, appears as a live recording done in Tokyo on Coldplay’s tour. Closing track ‘Hypnotised’, branded as an ‘EP mix’, is a slightly more spacious take on an existing single that ultimately acts as filler. ‘Miracles (Someone Special)’, a collaboration with Big Sean, is a headscratcher but both seem to play off each other well, probably because both he and Martin specialise in saying absolutely nothing in an upbeat and vaguely inspiring way ( “we go further than we’ve ever gone”). Just like A Head Full Of Dreams, universal and nondescript sentimentality is translated into widescreen rock through beautiful but ultimately empty production that Coldplay patented and dozens of others have copied.įirst, the bland tracks. is the same as it’s been for the last decade despite a number of different surface-level approaches. His predictable, myopic and often insufferably bland style has long since been par for the course, and Coldplay’s M.O. Martin, having turned 40 this year, is now a veritable elder statesman of pop, but his outlook doesn’t seem to have changed from the lyrical content on display. It houses two of the most interesting Coldplay songs for years, alongside three pieces of evidence ranging from pointless ballast to crimes against music that nail precisely why Coldplay are quite so derided among the critical community.
Unlike Prospekt’s March, the EP that acted as overspill for the same ideas as 2008’s Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, this was all written and recorded after the sessions for its ‘parent album’. Just like its parent album, Kaleidoscope is a curious and frustrating hotch-potch of artistic ideas that serves as a kind of brain-dump for loose ends rather than a fully-fledged creative statement – indeed, four of its five tracks have already been made available elsewhere. After nearly two decades at the very pinnacle of pop and a cultural ubiquity that allowed them to play the Super Bowl, there’s absolutely nothing at stake in either artistic or commercial terms for Chris Martin and co. The latest act accompanying a seemingly never-ending world tour in support of 2015’s A Head Full Of Dreams, Coldplay’s latest EP Kaleidoscope brings to mind the quote about Alexander The Great weeping for there were no more worlds to conquer. Intended as a companion piece to ‘A Head Full Of Dreams’, Coldplay’s new EP captures them at their best, and at their worst.