"It's our seventh thing, and the way we look at it, it's like the last Harry Potter book or something like that." - Chris Martin
Except that the last Harry Potter book was a fitting finale to the series. A Head Full of Dreams, on the other hand... When a band announces their final album, expectations are always going to be set unreasonably high. We have this misguided notion that everyone wants to go out with a bang when, quite frankly, some bands just want to go out. Period. That may not actually be the case with Coldplay, but the resulting album certainly sounds that way at times. For much of its duration, specifically album highlights "Kaleidoscope" and "Birds," Martin sounds jubilant and optimistic, and it's hard not to think he's simply celebrating the fact that he's about to cross the finish line. It's not that he's commemorating Coldplay's career so much as he's relieved to just be done with it. Victory laps aside, this unflinchingly danceable album is a welcome reprieve from the overly sorrowful weep-fest that constituted their previous album, Ghost Stories. Here, everybody wants to have fun, even if it has to force that fun out of themselves from time to time. It's a graceful exit, if that proclamation indeed holds true, but not one that should muster much fanfare.
