Toronto review: Coldplay takes red-hot show to Rogers Centre

Over the years, [i've] realized that any review of a Coldplay show I do boils down to this: I head in not wanting to like the band, and then nearly everything the band does makes me like it, writes the Toronto Star.

So, for expediency's sake, at the Rogers Centre Thursday night - where the de facto "biggest band in the world" of the moment played its biggest Toronto show to date before upwards of 40,000 people - I only took notes whenever Chris Martin and the rest of the lads did something to endear themselves to me. Here's the rundown.

1. I know they've agonized over the pre-show mixtape, because we're steered toward Coldplay's emergence by U2 (very "meta," lads), Martin pal Jay-Z's "Give It To Me" and ..... er ..... Strauss's "Blue Danube Waltz" - which is a modest way of referencing 2001 without piping "Also Sprach Zarathustra" over the P.A.

2. Everyone comes onstage waving sparklers.

3. "Clocks" is still massive, isn't it?

4. During "Yellow," dozens of enormous yellow balloons descend from the rafters in slow-motion free fall. Momentarily, everyone in the stadium is 3 years old. Martin stops the song to ask everyone to sing along because "it's in my script" (very "meta" again, lads) "even if you're in Row 706 and you're only here because of your girlfriend." Damn him, he's taken all my best lines.

5. "42." Douglas Adams is introduced to Radiohead. Very earnest in its artiness, but the noisy part is still aces.

6. "Fix You." I'd usually be leery of saying "I'm such a chick for liking this song." But since every single woman I know all but faints every time they hear this ballad and every single woman around me is currently on the verge of collapse, I think I'm safe.

7. Martin makes a joke of our garbage strike and his increasingly uncool hairdo ("Even the hairdressers are on strike in Toronto") to mollify a crowd restless with ballads and promises that, after "The Hardest Part" "we'll do 'Viva La Vida.'." They do. Uproar.

8. A mini-acoustic set conducted from the floor deep in the concert bowl contains a freestyle "rap" introduction to drummer Will Champion, a lovely version of "Green Eyes" that I videotape to suck up to my girlfriend and a cover of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean."

9. On the way out midway through a predictably boffo greatest-hits coda, I'm handed a free CD of live tracks entitled Left Right Left Right Left. I still rather like CDs and, I must admit, I understand completely why Coldplay still sells millions of them.

Source: Toronto Star

More new pictures of Coldplay at Rogers Centre, Toronto, ON (30th July 2009):