How do you like your pop: clean, dirty or downright soap-shy?

I am still listening to the new Coldplay album, and liking it more and more, and not just because everyone keeps telling me how terrible it is. There is perversity in all enthusiasm, for sure, but the unanimity of critical disapproval in this case seems to have mixed with popular ennui to create a bracing cocktail of contempt and contumely. It just makes me want to play the damn thing even louder. Ghost Stories (Parlophone) is the Millwall of break-up albums. If you don’t like it, it doesn’t care.

Maybe it’s because break-up albums are supposed to be dogged, downbeat affairs, recorded in one take in some grotty old studio with a 1950s mixing desk and the door hanging off its hinges. But this one is luscious, expensively recorded and clear as a bell. In fact, it’s one of the cleanest albums I think I have ever heard. You could eat your dinner off some of these orchestral arrangements.