Coldplay - Life is for Living | home

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They're just happy being sad

Hovering around the bottom of a list of what the world needs now must surely be, more whey-faced, introspective guitar bands. At first glance, the evidence is not good: Coldplay are four willowy men - higher education and a pot noodle diet not too distant a memory - and clearly au-fait with the finer points of Jeff Buckley, Pink Floyd and, inevitably, Radiohead. So far, so Muse.

Yet their debut album's secret arsenal comprises frontman Chris Martin's voice - prematurely aged for someone in their early twenties - and some supple, persuasive melodies. That and a great big side order of melancholy. Don't Panic and the single Shiver have a spidery quality with Martin's Jeff Buckley-esque voice assured and agile, but never performing gymnastics just for the hell of it. Spies is goosepimply, 4am stuff with a foreboding Floydian guitar, though it's matched later by Trouble's desolate piano hook.

You can only wonder what well of emotional trauma has been dredged for some of what's on offer here. Though the final, "hidden" track, Life Is For Living, has an oddly uplifting quality, as if the sun has just risen and all just might be right with the world. Halls of residence simply won't know what's hit them, but the rest of the world could do worse than get on board.