If smiley faces weren’t already taken as a signifier in pop, this album would be plastered in them. Coldplay’s last album, Ghost Stories (2014), was a sombre affair dealing with the fallout from Chris Martin’s conscious uncoupling. A Head Full of Dreams, by contrast, splats the band in primary hues, accentuating the positive with dance moves, ape costumes, high-profile guest spots – Beyoncé, Noel Gallagher – and Norwegian pop producers Stargate.

Instead of emoticons, Coldplay have illustrated this feeling with the spectrum of colours – à la Jamie xx, or Radiohead’s In Rainbows – and their newfound equanimity with “the flower of life”, a geometric doodle also used by emo bandBring Me the Horizon, the latter almost certainly a coincidence.

Coldplay have tended to absorb their influences more transparently than most. And for all the novelties here – electronic touches, chiefly – many echoes of U2 and Arcade Fire remain. As this album wends its way through departures and retrenchments, it feels very much like a transitional work, with the foursome dipping a toe into unfamiliar waters, keeping the other foot firmly on the shore.

On the one hand, you have lead single Adventure of a Lifetime, all flute loop and easy funk, a Hawaiian-shirted holiday from the earnest piano rock. “We are diamonds/Taking shape” is one of Martin’s better lyrics. It’s brand-busting, but hardly groundbreaking. Halfway through Army of One, Martin goes a little R&B (his heart goes “bu-boom-bu-boom-boom”) and you get a sense of what this album might have been.