Crack

3/20

For anyone who remembers being touched by the intimacy of Don’t Panic back in 2000, this will feel like the album that’s been gradually approaching ever since – the moment where it expands out of any semblance of sense and just becomes fucking weird. There’s no denying that Every Teardrop is a Waterfall and Paradise are big fat songs. Big fat songs like big fat cows in a field. There’s nothing sincere or clever about them, they’re just big and fat. In a move that seems to represent an acceptance of where Coldplay are at, Rihanna chips in on the overblown wreck that is Princess of China, but her sassy pop-queen tones simply serve to remind us, as on his collaboration with Kanye West, that Chris Martin is just a nice bloke from Devon, and you can’t help but laugh. The whole thing has strings coming out of its arse and enough reverb to sink a small ship, a feat in itself given the innately brittle nature of reverb, and the fact that it’s not actually a physical entity. Wow, epic bizarro pop rubbish from start to finish

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Words: Geraint Davies