A Rush of Blood to the Head

Coldplay’s 2000 hit “Yellow” earned them a rep as a watered-down Radiohead. Their second album suggests that such criticism was an insult to all the other watered-down Radioheads. Maybe that’s a bit harsh—while nothing here is remotely surprising, it all sounds overwhelmingly…OK. Lush pop hooks fall from a chorus of guitars, piano, and strings, but Coldplay stick them into lifeless tunes and play like drowsy geriatrics roused from afternoon naps. They have our permission to go back to sleep.