Coldplay live @ Emirates

Hey avid hi-son reader(s)! It's been a while! Time for another meandering stream-of-conciousness monologue on the state of live music from yours truly...


Had an amazing time seeing Coldplay at the Emirates on Saturday. We had fireworks, confetti canons, lasers, giant inflatables and radio-controlled light up wristbands for the whole crowd. It was a pretty stunning effort by the band and a huge contrast to the Viva la Vida tour which I also saw - at that gig, the music was similarly stadium-esque, but the visual feast on offer this time around made the whole gig seem so much more direct and engaging.

It's interesting watching the band go through their paces. They're certainly now an accomplished stadium act - one of only a few - where the music sounds better in that size and type of space. The lavish visual efforts tell of a deep desire within the band to go the extra mile for its fans and give them an unforgettable night. Chris Martin says little but for requesting his audience have the best night of their lives and go as crazy as they can - "The more crazy you go, the harder we'll play" or words to that effect. The crowd lap it up and make more noise than I've ever heard.

But something about it to me seems a touch too trivial and short-sighted. Is it enough to just get a happy buzz from a show for a few hours, or should we expect something deeper or richer from the experience? Could it be that all this effort to excite and wow the crowd is just pandering to their superficial needs and actually people crave something deeper? Isn't music capable of more than just fuelling the party vibe - isn't the best stuff when it gets under our skin, gives us goosebumps, moves us to feel compassion, joy, forgiveness?

I guess it comes down to the vision of the band and of the music. Clearly, Coldplay are interested in giving people a great time. I have no problem with that whatsoever, but I woke up Sunday morning and felt no different because of the experience. Yes, it was a great night, but I can't say it's had any particularly enduring effect. Other shows I've been to where there's been a strong political message or more soul-searching dialogue from the stage I think lend a richness to the music that they accompany.


And it's true, sometimes when you're in the crowd at a U2 show, Bono will be going off on one, or some promo vid for a charity will be rolling, some people get twitchy and start muttering for the band to just get on with the hits. It's risky to do stuff like that and you don't always get away with it. But I genuinely believe that there are things that need to be said that can only be said in that kind of environment, and even if some people don't get it, for those who are willing to be challenged, it makes for a more lasting and inspiring experience.

Happily, Coldplay seem to be quick on the up-take, so I'm hopeful that their next major step forward in their music and stage show will be to find some issue or another that keeps them up all night, that they get angry about, and think creatively about how to tell us all about it.

Chris

Coldplay - Myloxyloto, the scissor tool and how to be relevant.

Ahhh, there's nothing like it when you're a closet rock fan in a rap world. The way the cymbals sparkle, the way the vocals soar, the teles crunch through vintage valves, the melodies...oh the tunes!! Yes sir. Nothing like buying rock music after a month of producing hip-hop.

So I've been eagerly awaiting Coldplay's new album since their glasto set back in the summer, and it's great to finally have it on the stereo. It's a great listen - full of hopeful, uplifting tunes and none of that default mid-tempo stuff that put so many people off.

Anyone who's familiar with U2 will instantly recognise the influence of Brian Eno, not just for his trademark keyboard/sampler sounds that litter the soundscape but also the tightness and variety of the arranging which is the new album's greatest aspect.

So it seems whilst epic music (aka The Big Music) is very much alive and well, the days of the 70-minute epic are over. No one has the attention span for it any more. Even Radiohead's latest album was, by conventional standards, EP-sized. People just aren't keen for more than 45 minutes of one artist in one go.

But this may be no bad thing in general, and I definitely think in Coldplay's case, it's a great thing. In the space of three albums the band have learnt how [slash been forcibly made...] to massively reduce the amount of time it takes for them to say what they need to, and in so doing, learnt to say a lot more to boot.

This is something I greatly admire in an artist - the abililty to be concise and to be articulate, which often requires a willingness to strip things right down to their core - a producers' job that artists often squirm at and requires a huge amount of trust to even begin. You see nothing is a given in the music world. You're only as good as your last single. You have to keep ahead of the pack if you want to stay in the race at all. Most bands fade away into obscurity after 3 or 4 albums because they stop saying new things and stop reaching out to an audience beyond their committed fans. Chris Martin said recently he's not interested in being 'relevant', and that may well be the case as far as he's concerned. But his band have done exactly the thing they needed to do to remain so and I expect the album sales will reflect this come Christmas time.

And I reckon there's something profound here... Music is a very revealing art form. People need no formal training to appreciate it or to criticise it, and can see through any kind of fakery. They can tell if you're lying because the music instantly loses its credibility. They can also tell when you're trying too hard or trying to pull the wool over their eyes. You can't fake this stuff. The only way you stay relevant is to stop trying to be relevant and just be yourself. Find whatever it is you were trying to say all along and then say that and do that with every ounce of your energy. Then the music reveals the honest artist behind it and draws you in, which, especially in this obsessively inquisitive age, is what the punters want.

But here's the crunch. In our time-concious, attention-deficit-disorder world, who has the time to wait 5 albums over 11 years for an artist to find their voice? You need a lot of people on your side if you're to be given that opportunity for that amount of time. Chris Martin can count himself blessed to have been given that chance when a huge number of other bands have found themselves dropped from labels or been bound up in crazy licensing fights or had albums shelved indefinitely like diamonds to stop them saturating the market before they ever got a chance to move on from their one top 10 single. And in some ways the worst offender of all is the listening public themselves, where music is like fashion and its a fad one day and old news the next.

But it's encouraging to me that there are examples at the very highest peaks of the music industry of this kind of trust and endurance, development and redefining in bands. It keeps me determined to follow in their manner and to try to be every ounce the only thing that offers me the chance of thriving in this world - myself.

C

Even more pumped!!

At long last!

A new era for Coldplay

Does anyone else find it amazing that Coldplay sound the way they do now?

What really impressed me about Saturday night's Glastonbury performance was not so much the new stuff, but that their first album's material - Yellow, Shiver et al - sounded as lively and as full of hope as the latest songs. Which is remarkable because 'Parachutes' is about as alive as me going for a run at 7.30 on a monday morning.

It's not so much that the songs are different, they're just being played with more energy. And I have to say I think it's wonderful to see. Parachutes very quickly established Coldplay as the kings of mid-tempo, emotional balladry, and subsequent records have, in a way, only been further essays in the same basic direction. But hearing these early songs again being played with the same vitality and passion as the newer stuff was a real treat, and a mark, I think, of even more good things to come...

The key to longevity in the music world is re-invention. U2 have done it at least three times. Radiohead similarly. It's rare for bands to be able to recontextualise their main ideas, to shed new light on the same basic message, but it is vital if you want to push past the 4/5 album mark and still be winning new fans, and crucially, to remain relevant. And happily, Coldplay look like they're finding it at last too, no small thanks I'm sure to the influence of Brian Eno, who's already been largely responsible for helping U2 to redefine themselves.

What I find really interesting in this is that the obvious freshness and vibrancy to their music these days  is now finding itself working backwards through their whole catalogue, as if this energy was there right from the off, only we weren't able to notice it. Listening again to 'A Rush of Blood...', you can hear it more now, particularly in the first half, but it's veiled, and muscled out by a stronger sense of seriousness - an attitude which prevails right up to their most recent records.

But it looks like the sun is finally coming out on them. They've found that they can do groovy; they can do party tracks; they can have fun - as U2 discovered during the 90's. What was crucial for this period in U2's career was that they repackaged their ideas, but didn't stray away from them. Strangely, the brighter and funkier the music got, the darker and more introspective the songs became. However shallow they tried to become, it was never possible for them to divorce the music and the message.

But Coldplay, by comparison, aren't laboured with quite the same lyrical intensity and missional ethos so I think a more laid-back, less heavy-handed approach is way more appropriate for them.

Certainly the Glasto set presented a band looking very at ease and having lots of fun. And it was certainly a lot of fun to witness too!

Chris