mariae

Review, not so good. Monday 10/28/08 Izod Center Concert Review: C- Coldplay concerts used to be the best in the history of music due to 2 things: 1. Chris Martin singing directly to you. I have no idea how he did this. Sincerity, gratitude, being one with the music? This was missing last night. 2. Their light show was always the most artistic, mood creating/sustaining. That tradition was lost last night. Surprises: 1. The Good: crowd was great, on our feet, into it, supportive, but not obnoxious. 2. The Bad: Coldplay’s performance was perfunctory, (“we’ve had a bad Monday up till now” said Chris, but it showed the whole time—they weren’t happy to be here, even though the crowd was.) Chris sang ok, but skipped the high notes—and I think the reason he skipped them was the same reason his singing was perfunctory. No real emotion. If he loved singing the songs (he seemed bored and sick of singing them) and enjoyed performing last night, it didn’t show. I think Coldplay aren’t as confident of and don’t love their new work as much as their previous songs. True, this isn’t as good as the previous 3 albums—but you don’t muddle through—you keep improving those songs or don’t play them live. Worst of all, Martin did not seem to be singing to us, a skill he has more than anyone else. But last night he was just singing to do his job and get through the show [Note: Chris sang some songs an octave lower, in normal register, not falsetto, which sounded better than the originals. But high notes are necessary esp. on emotionally climactic points, which he too often skipped]. There were weird huge gaps between songs, as if they didn’t know what they were doing next. This almost lost the crowd. Chris hit wrong notes on almost every song on piano. The bass volume was erratic. The PA system sucked; very distorted, sounding like a cheap blown out speaker on vocals. Like U2 at their worst, Coldplay seems to have tried to fight boredom of playing same songs over and over by making them…disco!? Ugh. So they take a 500 dollar drum pad which sounds like drums on every crap rap/bubblegum pop song. The whole reason everyone likes Coldplay is the authentic, sincere music. Fake pop drum machine crap ruins that. Will has great jazz drum skills, but never showed them last night. Will played drums without any improvisation, no jazz riffs, no syncopation, no passionately going crazy on anything. How do you not go nuts on a kettle drum? If they're bored, why not spice up their songs by making them more like jazz? Or more indie, alternative, orchestral, hard rock, uk folk, or world music style? Or to make danceable, at least do good dance music (r&b or cutting edge techno). But if you’re going to imitate lame disco, then go all the way and camp it up and have fun with it. Instead, they did a drum machine. Then for acoustic style, the old harmonica. Predictable. The 3 other members of the band performed better than Chris, but all still look too self-conscious and uncomfortable on stage, have no interaction with crowd, no fun, no personality. Why don’t they improv on every song every night to keep it fresh and make the best of live performance for them and the crowd? 3. The Worst: Lighting. These were the worst lights in Coldplay’s career (with 3 exceptions, the video screen globes and the moving light rigs were great and butterflies were cool). But most lighting/staging was horrible. They showed the band too little and the audience too much. They imitated the worst traits of a U2 show again —too much house lights or similar lights on the audience. We didn’t come here to see each other and a basketball arena; we came to see the band. But unlike any concert I’ve ever seen, for several songs no one could see anyone in the band—the performers were in the dark! (To show off the screen globes? Unclear. Looked horrible and lost the audience). 4 roadies climbed 100 feet into spotlight rigs like Jedi fighters, yet they were barely used, risking their lives for nothing, a waste. The great thing about Coldplay lights for the last few years were that they were artistic, mood-setting, fit the music, ambient, subtle, and bathed the band and the audience just right—never going over the top, or being cheesy. These lights were cheesy. The 0506 tour’s amazing screen and light rig were missed. Projectors are fine, but nothing (other than globes) was done creatively—why not shoot lights or lasers through the Viva screen? No indoor fireworks, literally or figuratively. The lasers were a few corny multicolor pointers which swayed left to right a few feet. If you do lasers worse than a local planetarium’s stoners’ night out, then don’t do lasers at all. Why not try to out-do Muse’s standard-setting 06 MTV EMA award lasers? BATHE the audience as you used to! How did you have better lights and lasers in past years than you have in 2008? Finally, it’s a tour about celebrating life over death, you can’t do that well if you’re depressed. The whole theme becomes a failure. The album is Viva la Vida—we’re willing to go along with you on this—but you’d better perform with some LIFE. Instead you were all moping. That’s like going to a Fiona Apple concert and seeing her sane, or Amy Winehouse sober. If you’ve had a bad day, or worse, then the whole point of Viva, and of Coldplay in general—is to at least enjoy life while you have it and to love and enjoy making great music and sharing it with an audience that loves you.