Coldplay – vanguard of contemporary rock music

Viva la vida….Coldplay’s new album is a one with a conscious; it has a sense and feel of a world that surrounds us. A world filled with mixed emotions, highs and lows, integrated in many ways but still distant. It has a larger, wider almost a universal sound, and yes it does not have the swagger of their cult hit ‘yellow’ or the mass appeal of their Grammy record of the year winning ‘Clocks’. But this album has found an audience, music lovers who want something deep, something new and soulful. Last night I went to their concert in Melbourne, where they received a standing ovation buy a crowd of 15000 people at the Rod Lever arena. The stage was well designed, pictures, lights, sound and ramp where all very good. But what stood out was the crowd who enjoyed every minute of it, they where euphoric, ecstatic and where easily transported in the Coldplay world.

Coldplay dint disappoint at all, they went in the middle of the arena and played from there so that the fans could see them closely. They played with passion and precision, the lead singer Chris Martin, who dances, jumps runs up and down the stage also happily cracked jokes and kept us entertained. Some of the lyrics are very good, on one hand they can be confronting with ‘Was a long and dark December from the rooftops I remember, there was snow, white snow, clearly I remember from the windows they were watching while we froze down below, when the future’s architectured by a carnival of idiots on show, you better lie low’. The piercing intensity of the lyrics, if open to interpretations has a strange dark resonance with so much happening in the world. On the other hand their lyrics are upbeat and comforting as well ‘just because I am hurting, doesn’t mean I am hurt, doesn’t mean I dint get what I deserved, no better and no worse’. This also resonated with the fear, strife of everything today, climate meltdown, financial meltdown and a chaos which is no better and no worse, but doesn’t mean we will give up so easily.

Can’t wait for their next album, till then I am going to enjoy every single song of theirs. I remember a very good friend of mine introduced me to the music of Coldplay and I dismissed it saying it’s not that great, little did I know then that I would be a very big fan today! Cheers to that!