"I'm 31 now and I don't think bands should keep going past 33," said Coldplay frontman Chris Martin a few weeks back. The sound of rejoicing across the land could barely be contained, but a new interview with the singer suggests he isn’t quite ready to live the quiet life with Gwyneth, Apple and Moses.

Clarifying his statement, Martin says of their current bout of touring: “We're proceeding as if it's our last, because it's the only way to proceed. You've got to have deadlines, you know. What that means is we're going to pour everything we can into next year and not think beyond that. We always say that and we always mean it. But every time we say it, someone writes that it's over."

Martin also states that the band has to “do a lot before we're 33," and even hints that a quickie follow-up to Viva La Vida is on the cards. "I would like to build on what we've just done and deliver something short and optimistic,” he says. A long, pessimistic Coldplay album might be too much to bear, so at least we should be thankful that Martin is aiming to keep it brief. At the time of writing, Viva La Vida is standing at number 99 in Prefix’s year-end chart. [The Guardian]