Review: Coldplay
The world’s most palatable rock and roll band came to the sold-out Wachovia Center in South Philadelphia on Friday, working hard to please.
An hour and half spent with Coldplay is like enjoying a light summer meal, spread out on the lawn on a humidity-free late July evening. Chris Martin and his bandmates make for mildly engaging company, and even when they aim lasers to the rafters, the bombast goes down easy. Airy melodies carry the day, and it never threatens to develop into a hot and sticky situation.
The British foursome - along with Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckman, bass player Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion - took the stage half-obscured behind a scrim, with Martin strumming an acoustic guitar on “Life in Technicolor,” the vaguely exotic instrumental that leads off the band’s formula-tweaking fourth album
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Then, the curtain came up to reveal the backdrop of Eugene Delacroix’s bare breasted Liberty Leading The People. Nudity - at a Coldplay show! Then the arena sized entertainment began.
Sporting the silly blue and red military outfits that signal they’re all on the same soft-rock team, the foursome kicked off with “Violet Hill,“ the dark and stormy first single off the Brian Eno produced
. Martin and mates then proceeded to march through agreeable past hits like the mass singalong “Yellow” and momentum gathering “Speed of Sound.” They also did nearly all of Vida, the album which moved over 700,000 copies in its first week of release and together with Lil’ Wayne’s Tha Carter III, has thrown a lifeline to a floundering music industry, and whose highlight was the kettle drum powered iTunes-commercial title song.
Martin’s a high energy, ingratiating performer whose music is in its comfort zone when he’s bouncing on his piano stool on pulsing songs like “Clocks,“ with verses that can’t help but hurry towards anthemic choruses before settling back down to share intimate confidences. If you pay too close attention to the lyrics on heart-on-sleeve ballads like “Fix You” and “The Scientist” you might think you had wandered into a Hallmark card pep rally.
But though the band’s tendency toward grandiosity can’t help but come off as U2-lite, Martin self-deprecating charm diminishes the cloying quotient. “Even objectively, this is a tremendous reception and we’re incredibly grateful,“ the well-spoken rock star told the date night crowd, and later made a bad joke about how the band “all had to get nose jobs,“ when he apologized for rescheduling the concert, which was originally slated for June 29.
And to prove that Coldplay is a band of the people, the foursome - who distributed leaflets from anti-poverty organization Oxfam America - closed the set with by doing two acoustic songs in the midst of the crowd at the back of the building, including a quite lovely “Death Will Never Conquer,” sung by Champion. That interlude went so well that Martin received several “terrorist fist jab” congratulations from fans. “Don’t tell Fox News!” he quipped.
Mt. Airy raised Santi White - who has risen to ultimate hipster status as
- warmed up with an half hour set that did its best to connect with a half full house. The Brooklyn based White fronted an black and white color coordinated eight member ensemble that expertly navigated the New Wave, dub, reggae and electro-pop textures of her terrific Santogold debut, and included two stylish female robo-dancers who looked like a cross between Devo and Public Enemy’s paramilitary S1W’s. It wasn’t her crowd, but White was greeted warmly enough by the Coldplay crowd, even if she had to shout “Philadelphia!” twice to get a response that “sounds like my home town.“
Singer-songwriter Jonah Delso - from Westhampton, N.J., in Burlington County - won a WMMR (93.3-FM) contest to open the show. Delso did 20 solidly crafted minutes of piano cushioned pop songs like “Elevator” and “Before I Go Away” that dovetailed nicely with the unfailingly pleasant sounds of the headliner.