Ghost Stories

In many ways, Coldplay's sharp left turn is also its most listenable album in years, an evocative concoction of sullen phrases, sparse arrangements and powerful themes.

If your heart is shattered and you want to slide into self-pity, turn here. If you are feeling free and want to woo a new love, turn here. If you want to just enjoy every soft, supple turn a rock band could do, turn here. Coldplay are here for comfort, as Ghost Stories proves time and time again.

Coldplay is always going to be warm, nostalgic, melancholy, pleasant, innocent and good. They’re as much a warm word and an arm around the shoulder now as they were when they first showed up.

Rousing, downtempo pop to soothe a troubled soul.

In the scheme of Coldplay's career, Ghost Stories will likely be remembered as a transitional album. This is the sound of a band paying homage to their past--particularly 2011's hugely successful Mylo Xyloto--while pawing at the future.

On Ghost Stories, despite a near derailment, they "fly on," moving in fresh directions while keep the catharsis that gave them their audience in the first place.

Ghost Stories is set somewhere between depression and acceptance: While Martin sprints all the way out to the precipice, Coldplay--still the same four guys who brought you "Yellow" in 2000 and share equal credit on every track--don't slip over the edge.

Compared to the sleek, grandiose flash of Coldplay's last two albums—Viva La Vida and Mylo Xyloto, both underlined by help from Brian Eno--Ghost Stories feels as melancholically light and airy as Parachutes, while ironically sounding more like Eno.

Ghost Stories is a feeling more than a collection of songs, and takes a willing reception for granted. That feeling's not rancorous, it's bloodless and resigned, but touching as well.

Though a couple of songs feel undercooked—specifically “Another’s Arms” and album closer “O”--Ghost Stories mostly works.

Ghost Stories is overall a confessional and, as such, you definitely won’t find many anthems a la Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall or Viva La Vida. But you do get a short and sweet nine-track exorcism of demons and one crushed dude who knows how to pen some beautiful, infectious ballads.

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.

If the new music has the consistency of loose porridge, the lyrics prove just as watered down.