On their last album X&Y, Coldplay embraced arena rock for an hour's worth of huge-sounding tracks. The play time for the songs averaged at about five minutes, allowing the band to waft along a certain musical melody without experimenting or deviating much from the melodic core. Consequently, Coldplay started to sound more like U2 as they abandoned the hypnotic piano-driven style of their past and embraced the monstrously big sound that characterized X&Y.
With their most recent album Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, Coldplay still dabbles in expansive song structures, but they keep it to a minimum by scaling back song lengths and using exotic (for them, that is) instrumentation like church organs and honky-tonk piano. This could be because electronic wizard Brian Eno was on board for production duties, and if his influence is any indication, Coldplay actually sounds much better for enlisting this sort of unexpected help.
Eno's influence is prominent all over Viva La Vida, from the smoky guitars and vocals on the single "Violet Hill" right down to the operatic church organs on the fantastic "Lost!" But the stars of the show are obviously Coldplay, who clearly push themselves to adhere more to tighter song organization while still maintaining that big rock sound, burying Chris Martin's vocals a little deeper in the mix to give the tracks a rounder sound.
