Viva La Vida

They try hard, Coldplay, but it just isn't enough; their fourth album might just be their best yet, but it's still a long way from being the epochal classic that Chris Martin is desperate to create.

When it's not straining for Significance, though, Viva La Vida is often rather lovely.

Lyrics aside, Viva la Vida fixes most of the glaring problems with 2005's "X&Y," simply by eschewing verse-chorus structures in favour of something more episodic.

Viva La Vida starts off with promise for fans who felt that "X&Y" was a far cry from "A Rush Of Blood To The Head."... Unfortunately, the rest of the record fails to build on this.

Coldplay’s all about elongation this time around, and if you couldn’t tolerate their dramatics before, Viva la Vida will do nothing for you. Don’t get me wrong; to my ears, this is the group’s strongest offering yet, but since this album is the same old naive romanticism theatrically propped on a pedestal, it’s not really saying a lot.

Given Eno’s quarter-century of Bono-fides, this isn’t surprising. Martin’s interests are frequently vague--on 'Lovers in Japan/Reign of Love' he sings about soldiers who must soldier on and runners who must run until the race is won. Seriously?

When the pastoral Eno flourishes that started Vida off so promisingly return for a quick coda, Martin reverts back to his suavely crooning self, but blows it with his first four words: "And in the end . . . . " Bam, you're thinking 'Abbey Road,' and while Vida is far from a dog, it's just another unflattering comparison that the record itself needlessly invites--an extremely overconfident way to handle a crisis of confidence.

It's an improvement on the band's impressively dull 2005 album, "X&Y," but Coldplay's latest doesn't recapture the promise of the band's first two albums.