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You try so hard to resist, but in the end it catches up with you, this sick and pernicious business. It's just after ten o'clock in the arena, and Chris Martin hasn't really extended himself to sing much of 'Yellow' yet. Why bother, when the best part of 13,000 paying customers are so keen on doing the job for him? That's when it comes: the hardly-fresh realisation that big straight rock you've never liked much can, when translated into such a communal experience, be not exactly moving, but certainly quite touching. Hell, it can even make you forget 'The Office' has just started on TV.
This is how Coldplay got here, how they made it into the enormo-league: by making decent, fairly obvious music with that magical capacity to make a connection. What's more interesting, however, is where they're going now. That the calculatedly gauche Chris Martin could work an audience, we knew. That he and his band are stretching towards something more artistically interesting is a bit more of a surprise. Especially when you're the only person in Britain who hasn't actually heard 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head'.
The highlights tonight, then, come when Martin plays his piano in a forceful, repetitive style, his head banging near the keys, left leg spasming to the side, strobes rendering the spectacle oddly melodramatic. These thumping, clear-eyed trance songs from the new album - 'Politik', 'Clocks', 'Daylight' - are quite terrific. 'Daylight', in particular, epitomises the whitebread psychedelic vibe, with Jonny Buckland carving out a riff that's a dead ringer for Echo & The Bunnymen's 'The Cutter'. It all sounds rather like Tears For Fears when they thought they were The Beatles, too, but we're trying not to think about that.
Martin, meanwhile, spends 90 minutes working very hard at pretending he's some kind of ingenue who just woke up in a stadium rock band. Some of his spontaneity seems a bit forced as a result, not least the snatches of cover versions he interpolates into his own songs once or twice too often. Tonight his selection includes Nelly's 'Hot In Herre' (quite funny), Charles & Eddie's 'Would I Lie To You?' (commendably tasteful) and, as a dubious tribute to the West Midlands, Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody' (rubbish, but still better than the Oasis version on '1 Love').
Sometimes, too, his piano-man balladeering suggests a less-than-appealing future as an Elton John in Japanese jeans. He can sing, though - it's easy to forget how he raises 'Shiver' a class above most of the shoddy Jeff Buckley rip-offs purveyed by British bands in the last few years. And there are moments when real innocent exuberance crashes through, not least during 'In My Place', when his habit of manically hopping round the stage sends him flying over the piano stool and flat onto his back.
The most lucrative thing about Coldplay, however, remains that elusive talent to turn gigs into group hugs. It's nice - and nice is precisely the right word - that Oasis' successors in British rock are their opposites. A band who present themselves as humane rather than arrogant, who embrace rather than boorishly confront, Coldplay engender a sense of togetherness that makes for a satisfying, even vaguely intimate, stadium rock show. Well-mannered soppiness and tunes you can hum, played out on a vast scale: clearly, no cynic is beyond conversion in their scrubbed and sensitive hands.
Taken from: Dotmusic.msn.co.uk
This is how Coldplay got here, how they made it into the enormo-league: by making decent, fairly obvious music with that magical capacity to make a connection. What's more interesting, however, is where they're going now. That the calculatedly gauche Chris Martin could work an audience, we knew. That he and his band are stretching towards something more artistically interesting is a bit more of a surprise. Especially when you're the only person in Britain who hasn't actually heard 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head'.
The highlights tonight, then, come when Martin plays his piano in a forceful, repetitive style, his head banging near the keys, left leg spasming to the side, strobes rendering the spectacle oddly melodramatic. These thumping, clear-eyed trance songs from the new album - 'Politik', 'Clocks', 'Daylight' - are quite terrific. 'Daylight', in particular, epitomises the whitebread psychedelic vibe, with Jonny Buckland carving out a riff that's a dead ringer for Echo & The Bunnymen's 'The Cutter'. It all sounds rather like Tears For Fears when they thought they were The Beatles, too, but we're trying not to think about that.
Martin, meanwhile, spends 90 minutes working very hard at pretending he's some kind of ingenue who just woke up in a stadium rock band. Some of his spontaneity seems a bit forced as a result, not least the snatches of cover versions he interpolates into his own songs once or twice too often. Tonight his selection includes Nelly's 'Hot In Herre' (quite funny), Charles & Eddie's 'Would I Lie To You?' (commendably tasteful) and, as a dubious tribute to the West Midlands, Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody' (rubbish, but still better than the Oasis version on '1 Love').
Sometimes, too, his piano-man balladeering suggests a less-than-appealing future as an Elton John in Japanese jeans. He can sing, though - it's easy to forget how he raises 'Shiver' a class above most of the shoddy Jeff Buckley rip-offs purveyed by British bands in the last few years. And there are moments when real innocent exuberance crashes through, not least during 'In My Place', when his habit of manically hopping round the stage sends him flying over the piano stool and flat onto his back.
The most lucrative thing about Coldplay, however, remains that elusive talent to turn gigs into group hugs. It's nice - and nice is precisely the right word - that Oasis' successors in British rock are their opposites. A band who present themselves as humane rather than arrogant, who embrace rather than boorishly confront, Coldplay engender a sense of togetherness that makes for a satisfying, even vaguely intimate, stadium rock show. Well-mannered soppiness and tunes you can hum, played out on a vast scale: clearly, no cynic is beyond conversion in their scrubbed and sensitive hands.
Taken from: Dotmusic.msn.co.uk
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You try so hard to resist, but in the end it catches up with you, this sick and pernicious business. It's just after ten o'clock in the arena, and Chris Martin hasn't really extended himself to sing much of 'Yellow' yet. Why bother, when the best part of 13,000 paying customers are so keen on doing the job for him? That's when it comes: the hardly-fresh realisation that big straight rock you've never liked much can, when translated into such a communal experience, be not exactly moving, but certainly quite touching. Hell, it can even make you forget 'The Office' has just started on TV.
This is how Coldplay got here, how they made it into the enormo-league: by making decent, fairly obvious music with that magical capacity to make a connection. What's more interesting, however, is where they're going now. That the calculatedly gauche Chris Martin could work an audience, we knew. That he and his band are stretching towards something more artistically interesting is a bit more of a surprise. Especially when you're the only person in Britain who hasn't actually heard 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head'.
The highlights tonight, then, come when Martin plays his piano in a forceful, repetitive style, his head banging near the keys, left leg spasming to the side, strobes rendering the spectacle oddly melodramatic. These thumping, clear-eyed trance songs from the new album - 'Politik', 'Clocks', 'Daylight' - are quite terrific. 'Daylight', in particular, epitomises the whitebread psychedelic vibe, with Jonny Buckland carving out a riff that's a dead ringer for Echo & The Bunnymen's 'The Cutter'. It all sounds rather like Tears For Fears when they thought they were The Beatles, too, but we're trying not to think about that.
Martin, meanwhile, spends 90 minutes working very hard at pretending he's some kind of ingenue who just woke up in a stadium rock band. Some of his spontaneity seems a bit forced as a result, not least the snatches of cover versions he interpolates into his own songs once or twice too often. Tonight his selection includes Nelly's 'Hot In Herre' (quite funny), Charles & Eddie's 'Would I Lie To You?' (commendably tasteful) and, as a dubious tribute to the West Midlands, Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody' (rubbish, but still better than the Oasis version on '1 Love').
Sometimes, too, his piano-man balladeering suggests a less-than-appealing future as an Elton John in Japanese jeans. He can sing, though - it's easy to forget how he raises 'Shiver' a class above most of the shoddy Jeff Buckley rip-offs purveyed by British bands in the last few years. And there are moments when real innocent exuberance crashes through, not least during 'In My Place', when his habit of manically hopping round the stage sends him flying over the piano stool and flat onto his back.
The most lucrative thing about Coldplay, however, remains that elusive talent to turn gigs into group hugs. It's nice - and nice is precisely the right word - that Oasis' successors in British rock are their opposites. A band who present themselves as humane rather than arrogant, who embrace rather than boorishly confront, Coldplay engender a sense of togetherness that makes for a satisfying, even vaguely intimate, stadium rock show. Well-mannered soppiness and tunes you can hum, played out on a vast scale: clearly, no cynic is beyond conversion in their scrubbed and sensitive hands.
Taken from: Dotmusic.msn.co.uk
This is how Coldplay got here, how they made it into the enormo-league: by making decent, fairly obvious music with that magical capacity to make a connection. What's more interesting, however, is where they're going now. That the calculatedly gauche Chris Martin could work an audience, we knew. That he and his band are stretching towards something more artistically interesting is a bit more of a surprise. Especially when you're the only person in Britain who hasn't actually heard 'A Rush Of Blood To The Head'.
The highlights tonight, then, come when Martin plays his piano in a forceful, repetitive style, his head banging near the keys, left leg spasming to the side, strobes rendering the spectacle oddly melodramatic. These thumping, clear-eyed trance songs from the new album - 'Politik', 'Clocks', 'Daylight' - are quite terrific. 'Daylight', in particular, epitomises the whitebread psychedelic vibe, with Jonny Buckland carving out a riff that's a dead ringer for Echo & The Bunnymen's 'The Cutter'. It all sounds rather like Tears For Fears when they thought they were The Beatles, too, but we're trying not to think about that.
Martin, meanwhile, spends 90 minutes working very hard at pretending he's some kind of ingenue who just woke up in a stadium rock band. Some of his spontaneity seems a bit forced as a result, not least the snatches of cover versions he interpolates into his own songs once or twice too often. Tonight his selection includes Nelly's 'Hot In Herre' (quite funny), Charles & Eddie's 'Would I Lie To You?' (commendably tasteful) and, as a dubious tribute to the West Midlands, Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody' (rubbish, but still better than the Oasis version on '1 Love').
Sometimes, too, his piano-man balladeering suggests a less-than-appealing future as an Elton John in Japanese jeans. He can sing, though - it's easy to forget how he raises 'Shiver' a class above most of the shoddy Jeff Buckley rip-offs purveyed by British bands in the last few years. And there are moments when real innocent exuberance crashes through, not least during 'In My Place', when his habit of manically hopping round the stage sends him flying over the piano stool and flat onto his back.
The most lucrative thing about Coldplay, however, remains that elusive talent to turn gigs into group hugs. It's nice - and nice is precisely the right word - that Oasis' successors in British rock are their opposites. A band who present themselves as humane rather than arrogant, who embrace rather than boorishly confront, Coldplay engender a sense of togetherness that makes for a satisfying, even vaguely intimate, stadium rock show. Well-mannered soppiness and tunes you can hum, played out on a vast scale: clearly, no cynic is beyond conversion in their scrubbed and sensitive hands.
Taken from: Dotmusic.msn.co.uk