Coldplay in Warm Color Today, for the first time, I identified with Louis XVI and it gave me goose bumps. For me Louis was always a symbol of abusive decadence, since he was the ruling aristocracy of the French Revolution. I found that have walked on his clouds of superiority and watched the power of my honesty bow to the pleasure of his rule. All of this was unexpectedly evoked by Coldplay's title track for their new album Viva La Vida, which comes to stores June 18. The band has already released two songs from the album, Viva La Vida and Violet Hill. Viva La Vida is a first person narration presumably by Louis as he walks to meet the Paris crowds and the guillotine. Using imagery steeped in church history, Coldplay breathes warm emotion into the scene of a man who finally realizes that all of the power he enjoyed stripped him of his honesty, and for that he will die. The cello driven melody and the words of the chorus make the song almost celebratory, as if this final revelation was liberating. "I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing/ Roman Cavalry choirs are singing/ Be my mirror my sword and shield/ My missionaries in a foreign field." To whom he is speaking is ambiguous because it's irrelevant. The point isn't who he is following but that he is following. When we don't presume to rule everything we see, the world can be a beautiful place. Not bad for a title track. Violet Hill was released with a music video. With a strong guitar riff and a simple but driving beat, the song gallops ahead in four parts, two longer and two shorter ones. The band's lead singer, Chris Martin, asks at the end of each part, "If you love me/ won't you let me know?" In the first three parts he asks if the powers and institutions to whom he is subject love and care for him because he isn't feeling it. His government leaves him out in the cold, the religious sanctuaries are just another market-place, and priests are confused with soldiers. His third picture is a somber one, of a captain who sends his soldier below a sinking ship. The soldier asks, "If you love me/ Why'd you let me go?" In the last part, which is softer in tone and sung with the piano only, the singer asks the same question of his beloved while they sit on Violet Hill. He can't interpret her love either. The catalog of images shows not only that we are really looking for love in all of these arenas, but also how we consistently fail to show it. If these two tracks are any indication of the others, then it will be a lyrically rich and more blatantly expressionistic album than anything Coldplay has done so far. The music feels a little less systematic and controlled, like the band is venturing out of the cerebral into fields of human emotion. I gladly welcome them here, and look forward to their perspective.