Chris Martin and Coldplay provided some simple, quiet moments during their show. Photo by Jane Kalinowsky.
Coldplay frontman Chris Martin is silhouetted onstage at the sold-out MGM Grand Garden Arena on Friday. Martin's onstage antics were at times as dramatic as the band's songs. Photo by Jane Kalinowsky.
Coldplay desperately wants to be that shoulder for you to cry on. The band doesn't just tug at your heartstrings -- it practically swings from them.
The rock 'n' roll equivalent of a chick flick, Coldplay may be the world's biggest date band.
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Think "Beaches" with guitars.
This isn't a bad thing -- just ask any of the many couples who clung to each other like static electricity Friday at the sold-out MGM Grand Garden Arena.
But with its biggest hits being a trio of eye-watering ballads, the kind of tunes that soundtrack the slow dances at high school proms, Coldplay seemed intent on energizing their repertoire live.
And that the band did. Frontman Chris Martin was a blur of curly hair and eager-to-please charm, pirouetting about the stage like a drunken ballerina.
He fawned over hometown heroes The Killers and verbally batted his eyelashes at the crowd. "Whenever we sell out in Vegas, it means 10 times as much," he gushed.
Awww, c'mon, Chris, I bet you say that to all the girls.
By the band's second song, the stately rocker "Politik," Martin was already on his knees, singing with his back on his heels like an impassioned yoga instructor.
Coldplay's songs were similarly dramatic, most of them a series of sweeping crescendos that crested into big, rousing choruses meant to get lighters in the air.
The secret to the band's success is how reassuring their sound is. Martin often sings in a gentle quiver, backed by bright, ringing guitar that's both stirring and familiar.
Blanketed in a miasma of pretty lights and backed by towering video screens that displayed everything from nature films to brightly colored explosions, the band was a study in carefully manicured melodrama.
But the show also had its simpler, quieter moments, and those were some of the evening's best.
The band clustered at the foot of the stage under plain white lights to perform a spare, pretty, acoustic version of "'Til Kingdom Come." Coldplay wrote the song for Johnny Cash, but the country legend didn't live long enough to record it.
Too bad the band followed it with a wobbly, ill-advised cover of Cash's "Ring of Fire," which spoiled the mood.
But it didn't take long for Martin to win back the crowd.
During the band's encore, he ran to the back of the arena, where he sang fan favorite "In My Place" from atop an equipment case. Girls in the crowd rushed down to meet him.
But soon Martin was off, bolting back to the stage to finish the show. He'd catch his breath long before the audience would.
Similarly animated was Fiona Apple during her all-too-brief 35-minute opening set. Sometimes sulky and aloof, Apple's demeanor is always hard to predict.
"She's the Andy Dick of music," a guy next to me quipped.
But Apple was all manic energy at the MGM, throwing her shoulders at the crowd and gesticulating forcefully, like a cop directing traffic, shouting herself hoarse at times.
Her contemplative torch songs took on a much more visceral edge as a result.
