Ghost Stories

There is, of course, beauty to be wrung from sadness, and Ghost Stories has several lovely passages of outright melancholy.... But it can get a bit dreary and a couple of dollops of other emotions--anger, for one--could’ve gone a ways toward varying the mood.

While there are moments in which Coldplay take some interesting steps forward on Ghost Stories, there are a few moments when the band rests a little too heavily on easy listening or pop music clichés.

As a work of pure, confessional artistry it just doesn’t have the frazzled punch of the ‘great’ break-up albums, but if it did, it probably wouldn’t be Coldplay, and that would be a shame.

Although incumbent on its source material, Ghost Stories avoids wholly rote repetition by porting a modicum of the strangeness and innovation of other artists into its own body, despite Martin's clunky writing.

It has brief sparks of a fresh creativity and has plenty of potential, but doesn't take steps bold enough to totally reinvent itself, making for a record littered with moments that let it sink into the forgettable parts of the band's catalogue.

There are big, generalised emotions: hurt, love, loss, transcendence. But none of the tiny, idiosyncratic observations that make and break relationships.

The most striking things here are the tracks that shift furthest away from the standard Coldplay blueprint the lovely, beatless, vocoder-heavy drift of Midnight--based on an old track by electronic auteur Jon Hopkins--and the single Magic, which sounds not unlike the kind of beautifully understated pop song Everything But the Girl might have come up with in their mid-90s dance music phase. The rest is understated and equivocal, pleasant but underwhelming.

Mostly, though, this is music that keeps its head down. Martin accepts his loss too meekly to approach the anguish of a great break-up album.

Ghost Stories is the sound of Coldplay finally coming to terms with who they are--a universally loved, often loathed, slightly cheesy outfit. Charmingly cheesy, though.

The balance is off, and some songs suffer from a lack of direction.

This time around, deprived of their usual energy or lyrical quotient, they are nothing more than a momentarily likable diversion.

Variation, once a strong suit of Coldplay’s songwriting, isn’t much in evidence. Over nine songs, Martin and company create a mood and then stick with it--to a fault.

Ghost Stories certainly sounds like the product of someone working out their private pain in public; unfortunately, the results are less Blood on the Tracks and more "Can I Borrow a Feeling?".

As much as you care and as much as you want to feel sad, you can’t be blamed if after a listen or two, all you feel is manipulated.

As it is, these ghost stories pack few chills.

We all love to revel in a real tearjerker (Someone Like You, anyone?), but these whiney odes are heartbreak songs minus the heart.

Separation is writ large across the themes of Ghost Stories--and knowing what came next in Martin’s personal life, perhaps that was always to be expected. What’s not is just how lifeless so much of this material is, how instantly forgettable these songs are.