Chris & Jonny at Little Noise Sessions, London (24th November 2011): media reviews

For Coldplay fans, this was a rare opportunity. To see one of the biggest bands on the planet (well, half of them), in the tiny surrounds of a church, writes the Independent in a review of last night's Little Noise Sessions in London (with Chris and Jonny only). For fans of the band this is about as good as it gets. Which makes one wonder then, what made one woman up on the balcony think that it was a good idea to bring a tambourine? Even in the O2 - where Coldplay play two dates next month - it would be rude. But here, where the acts are playing stripped down sets in aid of Mencap, it's an absolute menace.

Chris Martin, to his credit, let's her get away with it during "Viva La Vida", where the audiences' "whoa-oh-oh-ahs" make up most of the noise. But when she starts tapping it during the opening chords of "The Scientist", he's forced to stop and ask her - very politely - to stop - "We've been playing it for ten years without a tambourine. I promise on the next song it's a tambourine frenzy," he laughs. It's a bizarre few minutes - but Martin does his best to soften the embrassment by ad-libbing a coda that pays tribute to the instrument. The rest of the set 10-song set, played just on neon-splattered piano and guitar, is charmingly shambolic for a band of Coldplay's stadium pedigree.

Without a rhythm section, Buckland and Martin contrive to muck up "Yellow", a song that they must have played at every gig they've ever played. There are a few stop-start moments elsewhere (Martin gets the key for the chorus to "Clocks" wrong), but it gives a feeling of uniqueness to the show that their festival and arena sets don't offer...

You can't say the same for the rest of the bill; Devonian folky Ben Howard is pleasant but has the presence of park bench; while Emili Sandé - fresh from a number one single with Professor Green simply screams "fourth place in The X Factor". Even the vicar looks bored. There's a lot to like and dislike about Coldplay, but dressed in all-black, Martin is still pleasingly humble, he even refers to his own band as "the shit Radiohead" at one point. Having your gig sabotaged by a rogue percussionist probably helps keep one's ego in check. But this is a sweet evening though, at no point more than when Martin shuffles his mic stand over next to Buckland's so the two can play "Shiver" from 2000's Parachutes. All it needed was a bit of tambourine...

Meanwhile, This Is London wrote: "This," chuckled Chris Martin at the start of the major coup of Mencap's Little Noise Sessions 2011, "is going to be more enthusiastic than professional". He wasn't wrong. For one night only, the Coldplay machine was replaced by an intimate, chaotic, endearingly ramshackle affair featuring just Martin and guitarist Jonny Buckland, underneath a Hackney church's stained glass windows and even more stained ceiling.

Unquestionably, the under-rehearsed pair missed the engine room provided by their missing drummer and bassist. As if desperate for a beat, Martin initially welcomed the audience member who had brought her tambourine but both men were distracted by the rattling, and Martin halted Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall to beg her to desist. Still, Martin remained cheery, dismissing Coldplay as "the shit Radiohead"; musing on how successful arguably the world's most popular band would be "if we had great bodies" and stopping Paradise mid-song to orchestrate the crowd's backing vocals. Buckland's adventurous guitar work was often lost but The Scientist was given a broody makeover; Martin's stentorian piano added a new layer of fascination to Violet Hill and Fix You's combination of comfort and uplift made the flintiest hearts crumble. Even at half-strength, Coldplay still move mountains.

Finally, the Guardian gives 4/5 stars for Chris & Jonny's performance and their review goes something like this: During the opening chords of The Scientist, the tinkles from the balcony become too much. Chris Martin stops the song, picks out the woman rattling a tambourine and launches a characteristically good-humoured rant about how "this isn't a tambourine song", how Coldplay have "played it for 10 years without a tambourine on it" and hoping she's not "from the Daily Star and going to fuck me over tomorrow". If this were a Van Morrison gig, someone would be receiving a tambourine suppository by now, but for Martin – though with tongue rammed stoutly in cheek – it's still the mock-meltdown of his career. Not the usual between-song banter at a charity acoustic gig in a church, then – part of Mencap's Little Noises Sessions – but it adds to the wit, warmth and intimacy of an enchanted evening. The casual Coldplay listener will claim they're the beigest band in Britain. Nonsense. Witness their album-based forays into krautrock and electronica, the ribbon-festooned revolutionary outfits of 2008 and some of the most dazzling stadium and festival sets in living memory. If the beige-sayers were right, a bog-standard, polished acoustic trawl through their big ballads tonight would illuminate their inherent blandness like a sea flare. Instead, a clearly underprepared Martin and Buckland conduct an open rehearsal on electric guitar and piano, full of bum chords and knockabout charm.

Crucially, the pair don't handle their songs like delicate relics but toss them about like stickle bricks, stopping to remember key changes, perform random beatboxing or get the boisterous crowd to sing backing vocals. Clocks gradually accelerates towards a key-smashing climax. What Yellow loses in bluster it makes up for in mournful import. If Viva la Vida and Violet Hill lack their usual tub-thumping dynamics, instead they're brim full of melodic enchantment and singalong pomp. And both The Scientist and Fix You, stripped bare and full of heart, give the walls goosebumps. "This whole concert's gone to shit," Martin chuckles to Buckland as Every Teardrop is a Waterfall breaks down amid more distraction from their tin-tapping nemesis. More nonsense; it's been like watching the magic happen.

Photos from Little Noise Sessions St John-at-Hackney, London, UK (24th November 2011):