{"id":41258,"date":"2008-12-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/prospekts-march-ep\/"},"modified":"2008-12-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-11T00:00:00","slug":"prospekts-march-ep","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/prospekts-march-ep\/","title":{"rendered":"Prospekt’s March (EP)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coldplay\u2019s latest, Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, <\/i>is — for me, at least — one of this year\u2019s clear-cut triumphs. With Brian Eno at the helm, fantastically fleshed-out arrangements, and less overt cheesiness, the album wasn\u2019t just a standout in comparison to the rest of Coldplay\u2019s catalogue, but was also head-and-shoulders above a good majority of this year\u2019s chart toppers.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Hot on the heels of Viva La Vida <\/i>comes this handy little EP, an eight-track offering of songs that didn\u2019t make it onto the original album. Nothing here is exactly innovative, but that doesn\u2019t make it any less enjoyable. And when considered as a fourth-quarter money grab or a way to keep attention, Coldplay fans could do a lot worse; there\u2019s only one chopped-down single edit (\u201cLovers In Japan [Osaka Sun Mix]\u201d and one forty-second instrumental (\u201cPostcards From Far Away\u201d). Overall, it\u2019s far less throwaway than you might imagine, and most of the material here could\u2019ve been slotted nicely onto Viva La Vida, <\/i>being that everything is in tune with their carefully crafted new formula. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

The EP starts out on a high note with \u201cLife In Technicolor II,\u201d which gives flesh and bones to the solely instrumental \u201cLife In Technicolor,\u201d which both opened and closed the album. The production is glossed to a shine and Chris Martin\u2019s vocals soar to stadium heights; the lyrics aren\u2019t as immediate as \u201cViva La Vida\u201d or \u201cViolet Hill,\u201d but to be perfectly honest, lyrics have never been Coldplay\u2019s forte.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

\u2026Which is proven pretty quickly with \u201cGlass Of Water\u201d (which follows the lovely piano interlude of \u201cPostcards From Far Away\u201d). Too often Martin falls into the trap of sounding like a low-grade Bono — and a late-era Bono, not the brilliant Bono of Joshua Tree <\/i>or Acting Baby <\/i>or even All That You Can\u2019t Leave Behind.<\/i> Lines like \u201cSon, don\u2019t ask \/ Neither how full nor empty is your glass \/ Cling to the mast \/ Spend your whole life living in the past \/ Going nowhere fast\u201d are exhaustingly trite. Fortunately, the thick ringing guitars pad over most of the vague stabbings at profundity, and do prove at least that Coldplay can sound just as epic when they\u2019ve cranked up the volume.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Midway through, \u201cRainy Day\u201d is where Prospekt\u2019s March <\/i>gets most interesting. It\u2019s the most divergent from the Viva La Vida <\/i>gameplan with funky, electronic verses that give way to a lilting, string-laden chorus — a weird combo, but it works, and the refrain \u201cI love it when you come over to my house\u201d is a breathless, joyful break from the relative heaviness of most of the album and, in turn, this EP (see \u201cProspekt\u2019s March\/Poppyfields\u201d for a dip back into that edgy, Radiohead-esque darkness). <\/o:p><\/p>\n

From there, the disc loses some steam. \u201cLost+\u201d ropes in avowed Coldplay fan Jay-Z for a verse, but even I\u2019m growing kind of weary of \u201cLost!\u201d after spinning it on repeat since the summer. Meanwhile, \u201cLovers In Japan (Osaka Sun Mix)\u201d is a single-edit that boasts only a few instrumental switchups to make it worth your time. Still, closer \u201cNow My Feet Won\u2019t Touch The Ground\u201d is a quick, sweet acoustic ballad that serves as a nice sendoff for the Viva La Vida <\/i>chapter of the Coldplay catalog.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Coldplay isn\u2019t particularly innovative, but they\u2019re still commendable for recognizing their limits and attempting to stretch and mold to them. They may not be hip, but I still love \u2018em to death (and all his friends), and Prospekt\u2019s March <\/i>is a fairly solid way to tide any Coldplay lover over until they return.<\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":29658,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6898],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-41258","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-coldplay","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41258"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}