Coldplay’s Hot Air

In which our intrepid author reviews the rock band’s Aug. 6 performance in Philadelphia.

At the entrance of Philadelphia’s Eagles stadium where we’ve come to see Coldplay, we’re handed translucent white wrist devices that give off a distinct “house arrest” vibe. At concessions, the beers cost nine dollars, which is actually the price of nine beers. The inner stadium is packed to the gills with financial advisers in Lacoste and nineteen year olds in candy bracelets.

As it turns out, the wristbands weren’t distributed as one of the litany of opaque, dystopian measures to which one submits at any crowded arena. They’re actually part of the event — they blink colorful LEDs during the band’s high-energy numbers, smearing a pointillist light show over the stadium. The colors are sharp and the flashes rapid, creating of the audience a striking visual tempest that upstages the musical performance and reduces it to a distorted soundtrack for cell phone videos of the spectacle.

During the numbers for which the wristbands go dark, the band members are dwarfed by an enormous screen displaying celestial bodies in motion. As the stars zoom by, the collective breath is taken by the illusion of outer space exploration scored by Coldplay’s symphonic anthems. The feeling is one of limitless possibilities, transcendence, infinity.

And that’s the world advertised in Coldplay’s music. Every song on Mylo Xyloto tells a skeletal story of a generic individual overcoming a generic obstacle to the kind of boundless but undifferentiated freedom a high school senior might envisage after reading the first couple chapters of On the Road. Possibility and potential of the kind glimpsed in commercials for granola and laundry detergent.

“We’ll run riot/ We’ll be glowing in the dark,” one song promises. Another’s chorus simply repeats the word “paradise.” “Us Against the World,” surprisingly, asserts that “it’s us against the world.” “Every Teardrop is a Waterfall” declares “I’m on a roll this time/ And heaven is in sight.”

The chorus to “Clocks” simply goes “you are/you are.” Affirming and exalting the listener is indeed Coldplay’s modus operandi. That sounds like a worthy pursuit, were it not at the expense of any meaningful expression.

Chris Martin’s stage presence underscores this dearth. The English songwriter bounds around the platform with an American flag trailing out of his distressed jean pocket, looking like it is coming out of his asshole. He’s as sycophantic and contrived as an ambitious middle manager when he banters to the audience, joking “I bet you’d rather be at home watching Michael Phelps!” Well, no, dumbass. You’re supposed to say that kind of thing during board meetings, not rock concerts with tickets priced north of $450.

At several points, Martin declares us the best audience he’d ever had. Yeah? What would a bad audience look like, at a stadium concert with fireworks for every other song? An audience with wristband glitches?

The Coldplay experience is self-congratulatory. Music, in most cases, is obviously meant to make you feel good. But Coldplay goes one further, aiming to flatter the listener, to ingratiate itself to them.

The broader spectacle at the stadium drowns out the tepid performance by degrees of magnitude. That’s because musical expression is ancillary, and the artist’s emotions don’t factor in. What matters is you, as a consumer. Coldplay preaches the insipid optimism of a world designed to offer you cars with low gas mileage.

Truthfully, Coldplay’s music isn’t bad. It’s actually good, in the sense that it passes muster with the youngest and most educated members of a given corporate focus group. Its hooks are relentless, and the rollicking, symphonic glee it achieves can be a welcome musical accompaniment to a drunken car ride.

It’s music for commercials. It’s music for a world in which the free market fantasy of the rise of the autonomous individual has fully completed its transubstantiation into tacky New Age care of the soul.

But hey, it’s a pretty damn good show. The Philadelphia night sky, smudged by the stadium glow, effects a nice counterpoint to the dazzling array below. And it especially helps to do as I do: transgress your own budgetary red line (and self-respect) and shell out $27 for beers.