Table of Contents
COLDPLAY: Music of the Moon (Parlophone)
Verdict: heavenly sounds
Ten albums into a career that began with a modest debut album, Parachutes, in 2000, Coldplay’s Chris Martin has suggested that the band’s days are numbered.
“We’re only going to make 12 albums proper, and that’s real,” he said in an interview this week with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “It’s really important that we have that limit.”
He explained that a deadline would ensure they maintained quality control. And while it’s wise to be wary of any musician who hints at early retirement, the bar is high on the new Moon Music album.
Embodying all the traits that have made them one of Britain’s biggest bands (and eschewing, for the most part, the trite lyrics that have let Martin down in the past), it’s a consummate Coldplay record.
The countdown to today’s launch has gone swimmingly. In June, the group had a brilliant Saturday headline appearance at Glastonbury, while tickets for next year’s stadium tour are selling fast.
Ten albums into a career that began with a single-minded debut album, Parachutes, in 2000, Coldplay’s Chris Martin has suggested that the band’s days are numbered.
Another indication of Coldplay’s status came last month when their ubiquity reached the England men’s cricket team.
The ten Wembley shows the quartet will play will eclipse the previous record of eight, held jointly by Take That’s Progress Live 2011 show and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
Another indication of Coldplay’s status came last month when their ubiquity reached the England men’s cricket team. After Sri Lanka humiliated his team in the third Test at The Oval, batsman Joe Root justified his poor performance by saying: “Coldplay can’t be number one every week.”
However, Moon Music will most likely comfortably top the charts. Produced by Swedish pop maestro Max Martin, it combines elements of his two previous releases: the adventurous spirit of 2019’s Everyday Life and the powerful hooks of 2021’s Music Of The Spheres. Even his fiercest detractors would be forced to deny his gift. for the melody.
Like Music Of The Spheres, which was set in a fictional planetary system, Moon Music is peppered with celestial imagery. “I’m trying to trust in the heavens,” Martin sings on the title track, which begins as a symphonic overture and evolves into a simple but moving piano ballad. The main character of the LGBT anthem Jupiter is a woman named after the giant planet.
With next year’s tour in mind, there are songs seemingly designed to be sung by tens of thousands of fans. Feels Like I’m Falling In Love is dizzying and euphoric, and iAAM (short for ‘I am a mountain’) is driven by Will Champion’s booming drums and a searing electric guitar solo (a rarity for Coldplay these days) by Jonny Buckland.
When the band recruited former Disney Channel star Selena Gomez and K-pop boy band BTS to help on Music Of The Spheres, it seemed like a less-than-subtle attempt to court a younger audience. The collaborations here, however, have greater artistic merit, with rapper Little Simz and Nigerian singer Burna Boy giving star turns on We Pray.
Chris Martin believes that Moon Music is one of the band’s strongest albums. “If you’ve ever liked Coldplay, your favorite Coldplay song is probably on this album,” he says. So is there another Viva La Vida or Fix You? It’s a high bar, and those things are usually only evident once the songs have been played live, but I see two contenders.
A look at Coldplay’s new album called Moon Music
The first, Good Feelings, is an electrifying R&B duet between Martin and Afrobeats singer Ayra Starr. The other, All My Love, has all the ingredients to please the public. Sung by Martin in a tender falsetto, it evokes The Beatles’ Let It Be and Carly Simon’s Nobody Does It Better.
In Moon Music, Coldplay once again reaches the entire universe. But the underlying themes are down-to-earth, with everyday emotions expressed in simple, yet overly sentimental, pop songs. Or as Martin says in One World: “In the end, it’s just love.”
This album won’t win many new fans, but Coldplay fans will be in luck.
JAMES BAY: It changes all the time (EMI)
Verdict: Get back into gear
James Bay never lived up to the promise of his 2014 debut album, Chaos And The Calm, which earned the Hertfordshire singer a BRIT for best male artist. He foolishly abandoned his blues sound on a second pop album, Electric Light, and then found himself out of step with the times when he returned to core rock on 2022’s Leap.
This time it should go better. The UK’s top three songs of 2024 so far are by introspective male soloists – Noah Kahan’s Stick Season, Benson Boone’s Beautiful Things and Teddy Swims’ Lose Control – and Bay reiterates his credentials as a revelatory storyteller on Changes All The Time.
James Bay never lived up to the promise of his 2014 debut album, Chaos And The Calm.
Made with American musician Gabe Simon, who produced Kahan’s Stick Season, there’s a directness to Bay’s folk-rock ballads.
There are also two notable co-writers, with Killers frontman Brandon Flowers on Easy Distraction and Grantham singer Holly Humberstone collaborating on country-soul ballad Dogfight.
Both albums are out today. Coldplay will begin a UK tour on August 18, 2025 in Craven Park, Hull (coldplay.com). The James Bay tour kicks off on 1 February 2025 at O2 Academy, Glasgow (ticketmaster.co.uk).
Harley Quinn’s jazzy tribute to the Joker
LADY GAGA: Harlequin (Interscope)
Verdict: jazzy detour
What Lady Gaga fans will think of her latest foray into jazz is anyone’s guess. Her ‘Little Monsters’ devotees have grown accustomed to her spectacular costumes (like 2010’s infamous ‘Meat Dress’), outlandish wigs and over-the-top live shows.
His most recent album, 2020’s Chromatica, was a celebration of his roots in electronic dance music.
Gaga is in her element on the upbeat big band songs Get Happy and Good Morning, and drifts into the show’s melody If My Friends Could See Me Now.
But the singer (right), born Stefani Germanotta, also enjoys updating the Great American Songbook, as demonstrated on the two duet albums, Cheek To Cheek and Love For Sale, she made with the late Tony Bennett. Guided by the master of intimate singing, her instinctive phrasing demonstrated her jazz credentials.
She charts a similar path on Harlequin, a ‘companion album’ to the new film Joker: Folie à Deux (reviewed opposite), in which she plays Harley Quinn.
A mix of covers, songs from the film and two original songs, it is a kind of soundtrack.
However, somewhat confusingly, an official cast album is also available, as well as an original score by composer Hildur Guðnadóttir.
Gaga is in her element on the upbeat big band songs Get Happy and Good Morning, and drifts into the show’s melody If My Friends Could See Me Now, but Harlequin lacks the warmth of her duets with Bennett.
Of greatest interest are the original tracks. Folie à Deux, which appears in the film, is sung with a touch of menace. Happy Mistake, which only appears on this album, is a raw ballad about fame: an introduction, perhaps, to an upcoming studio album. “I can try to hide behind the makeup,” she sings, “but the show must go on.” An actor until the end.
THE BEST OF THE NEW RELEASES
ROCK AND POP
THE SMILE: Cutouts (XL)
With their second album in ten months, Radiohead spin-off The Smile is certainly prolific. But there’s also a hint of diminishing returns on Cutouts, with the trio’s jittery rhythms and labyrinthine melodies losing their ability to surprise. The musicality, as always, is exceptional. Jazz drummer Tom Skinner leads the band superbly, while guitarist Jonny Greenwood delivers classic rock riffs on The Slip and funkier lines on Zero Sum, which also features the unlikely rap sound of Thom Yorke.
CLASSIC
JONAS KAUFMANN: Puccini – Love Affairs (Sony)
It may seem quixotic to judge Jonas Kaufmann’s latest CD by the parade of prima donnas it presents, but it is inevitable.
In the opening ‘O soave fanciulla’ of La Boheme, the famous tenor sounds a little guttural and hoarse, and it is his Mimi, the Bonita Yende, who accompanies him.
Then there’s Anna Netrebko as Manon, Sonya Yoncheva as Tosca, Malin Bystrom as Minnie, Asmik Grigorian as Giorgetta and Maria Agresta as a soulful Mariposa.
That said, the German star, 53 years old at the time of the sessions, mainly sings in a thin tone, although her voice is heavier than on her 2010 album Verismo Arias.
He is well accompanied by the Teatro Comunale Orchestra of Bologna under the direction of Asher Fisch and at the end he adds two popular arias from La Boheme and Tosca.
The presentation is excellent, with all texts in four languages, photographs of the artists and an interview with Kaufmann about his choices. The sound is atmospheric.
SCHUBERT: Symphonies 1-6, 8 and 9 (Challenge Classics, four CDs)
What, no Seventh Symphony? Although it exists in short form and Brian Newbould has completed it very well.
The Dutch maestro Jan Willem de Vriend and the prestigious Residentie Orkest of The Hague stick to the usual eight works and do not even attempt to complete the famous ‘Unfinished’.
The Fifth and Sixth were recorded in 2022 in the orchestra’s brand new hall, which seems to have good acoustics; the others were placed in two temporary homes.
I started listening at the end with Big C major, No. 9, and worked backwards, getting the impression that they were friendly readings that suited the conductor’s name.
The early symphonies of the adolescent Schubert are taken seriously, but not too solemnly, and the style of each work is highlighted, with influences from Mozart and Rossini.
What this genius would have left us if he had lived even a few more years is impossible to understand. The riches contained in this soberly presented box are already enough to sustain us.
TULLY POTTER