In which Brian Eno does for Coldplay exactly what he did for U2, which is make them a sort of super-deluxe glossy version of what they already were, which means make them a sound that won’t get tinnified in stadiums but won’t promote tinnitus in your headphones. You know, very very very big, very very smooth. Like the planet Jupiter – beautiful, not much life on it, but sort of breathtaking in its … well, in its smooth bigness. Viva la Vida – or as the slightly poppier and more Nietzschean Wham put it on their t-shirts, Choose Life! – does a seamless and seemly job of emphasising the sonic necessities and niceties of stadium rock. It’s designed to seep into every corner of enormous stadiums and leave no channel of your sixty-million track studio – or dollar of your sixty-million dollar budget – unused. It’s music like gas, designed to always fill its container. And as the slightly more experimental T-Rex put it … Life’s A Gas.