Coldplay’s new single, “Viva la Vida,” is already ubiquitous — at least, 30 seconds of it. That the song is patently inoffensive in its wallpaper-like omnipresence on radio and television is a new wrinkle for the band. With a gentle, string-propelled melody and Chris Martin’s plangent voice — for once not creaking through a falsetto while singing an instantly catchy line, “I used to rule the world” — it feels completely innocuous whenever iTunes or iPod TV advertisements come on, or when the song crops up in a modern radio playlist. As of press time, “Viva la Vida” sits at the no. 2 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 single charts.

It’s not a particularly new direction for the globe-trotting British quartet — a slowly building mid-tempo song that is equally at ease in a TV spot or on a summer festival stage — but it lacks the myopic self-importance of such previous Coldplay singles as “Clocks” and “Yellow,” songs about nothing that aspired to have something to say. A patina of political observation runs through “Viva la Vida,” but it is mere window dressing to an incorrigibly catchy pop song.

That’s the refreshing aspect of Coldplay’s fourth album, “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends” (Capitol), which is out today. With legendary producer Brian Eno behind the mixing board, and cover art that cops its image from French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 “Liberty Leading the People,” which commemorated the July revolution that removed Charles X from the French throne, this album has been rumored to be Coldplay’s most politically minded and musically adventurous. And perhaps it is. Lyrically, Mr. Martin favors the use of clichés and other opaque imagery throughout, and the band doesn’t rely too heavily on its signature piano-based melodies anywhere on the album’s 10 songs. But what’s most appealing about this album is how easy it goes down. Coldplay has rarely sounded this unambiguously mainstream pop-rock.

The band’s migration away from its norm is encapsulated on “42,” a song that starts off sounding like the Coldplay of old. Over a solitary, self-pitying piano line, Mr. Martin resorts to his falsetto, whining the trite line, “Time is so short and I’m sure there must be something more,” over a swelling wash of synthesizers. But at the 90-second mark of the song, drummer Will Champion and bassist Guy Berryman puncture the synth breeze with a throbbing groove, and soon guitarist Jonny Buckland is slicing through this neck-snapping rhythm with darting chords. The three instruments swirl into a noisy thundercloud that eventually parts as Mr. Martin’s voice returns, minus the falsetto and emoting in a more natural register, singing the elusive line, “You didn’t get to heaven but you made it close.”

It’s a surprisingly well-arranged musical dynamic, paired with superficially catchy lyrics. Some credit for that should be bestowed upon Mr. Eno. While, yes, Mr. Eno did produce the indelibly edgy 1978 no-wave compilation “No New York,” he has also produced almost every U2 album since 1984’s “The Unforgettable Fire.” Obviously, he knows how to steer bands toward the middlebrow appeal of stadium pop.

But also credit Coldplay for trying something slightly different without trying too hard. Critically maligned since its 1999 debut album, “Parachutes,” as a watered-down Radiohead clone, the band has distanced itself from that derisive comparison not so much in sound but in temperament. Of the major British rock bands of the ’90s, Radiohead has always been the one with the most ambition, with aspirations to art, social commentary, political observation, music industry upheaval — the whole nine. And while Messrs. Berryman, Buckland, Champion, and Martin probably did enter the studio thinking about making a more musically experimental album with some vague ideas about contemporary politics (Mr. Martin has been a vocal advocate of free trade in years past), they clearly didn’t place any such notions above the goal of making a perfectly listenable pop album.

“Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends” is never anything more than a mainstream artifact, but there’s something rather cute about such modest goals. Mr. Martin himself is such a self-deprecating presence in interviews that it’s hard to think about him and the band deciding to sing about paranoid androids, technological disenfranchisement, or other such postmodern milieus. Coldplay sounds perfectly at ease singing about such pulpy concerns as ghosts (the ethereal “Cemeteries of London”), nonspecific emotional malaise (the TV on the radio-esque “Lost”), love (“Lovers in Japan”), and loneliness (the slinky rocker “Yes”). On “Violet Hill,” Coldplay comes nigh close to sounding like heavy rockers — complete with a guitar solo — while in the disarmingly effective “Strawberry Swing,” the band whips up an eclectic folk song through which Mr. Martin sings a bubbly, romantic ditty about the proverbial good old days.

It’s in such giddy moments that Coldplay emerges as more Dave Matthews Band populist than Radiohead cultist. “Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends” isn’t going to win over the band’s naysayers, but its workmanlike drive toward the mainstream’s middle ground perfectly suits a band that sounds as though it is as surprised as its harshest critics that it’s an arena draw.