Album: Coldplay, Mylo Xyloto (Parlophone)

Generally speaking, the more producers involved with an album, the less distinctively defined its contours, the various opinions tending to nullify the more extreme ideas.

For Mylo Xyloto, Coldplay have again employed three producers – Markus Dravs, Daniel Green and Rik Simpson – with Eno's role reduced to additional "Enoxification", and the results are smoothly pallid even by their standards, the usual modes of exultant melancholy and epic sympathy exacerbated by the earnest thrumming of acoustic guitars that punctuates the familiar piano vamps. "Hurts Like Heaven" opens proceedings at a peak, the twinkly demeanour of its bustling pop layered with disparate guitar lines; but it's downhill from there, the supposed concept – lovers united against an oppressive dystopia – rendered in music that's equally as hackneyed.

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