Coldplay

For any deranged, obsessive, able-to-recognise-the-drummer-in-a-crowd Coldplay completists out there, here’s every single and their B-sides collected together in a seven-inch box-set – surely like releasing every deleted scene from Last Of The Summer Wine in a special edition bathtub on wheels. Fascinating to recall just how soggy-trousered and Radiohead they were on ultra-rare debut ‘The Blue Room EP’ and to hear them grow from wafty indie shamblebums to arena-teabagging monsters by ‘Yellow’. Less fascinating to realise they’re no Smiths when it comes to revisit-worthy B-sides: dreary acousti-rock slurry to a man (except ‘1.36’ and ‘Things I Don’t Understand’). Wait for the stonking Greatest Hits.

Mark Beaumont

6 out of 10