Coldplay no longer sound themselves on their sixth record. No one ever said they were an exciting dynamic band with their own brand of soft rock ballads filling out arena but even for a Coldplay fan this album is slow. In fact this sounds like a band that really wants to be Bon Iver. The production help from Timbaland, Madeon and Avicii is barely noticeable as every song blends into one big synth marathon.
Written post-Paltrow split Ghosts Stories is a concept album that tells the story of someone going through a dramatic and sudden breakup, with the narrative following the man’s various emotional states leading up to his eventual acceptance of the situation. The album revolves around a central theme of “opening yourself up to love”, and accepting that love isn’t eternal. This theme collects clichés and makes you wonder if this is the same unit that wrote ‘Fix You’.
Keeping the electronic influence of 2011’s Mylo Xyloto the pretty harmonies and heart-breaking lyrics are replaced with gentle synths, making this album perfectly suitable background music. The single ‘Midnight’ is the most interesting this album gets with ‘A Sky Full Of Stars’ being the most lively.
Ghost Stories is a harmless, yet competent album with some out-of-place electronic outros and dreary vocals, unfortunately it’s not Coldplay’s finest moment.
Ghost stories is released May 20th