At the end of the Friday night performance, frontman Chris Martin admitted that it had started out as one of their worst gigs ever, with the band in a bad mood and running into a bit of trouble playing Trouble, one of the tracks from their first album, Parachutes. However, said Chris, they picked themselves up and turned the mood around, and by the end of the evening Coldplay was in top form.

This was the first time I'd seen Coldplay- hopefully won't be the last! -so I've never seen them play a perfect show, but I thought the performance was fantastic, warts and all. So Chris forgot the words while he was singing a song; it just proved that even rock stars screw things up from time to time, and gave the audience a chance to connect with him on a more human level.

I don't know if the set list was supposed to include Everything's Not Lost after Trouble, but it was a brilliant song to play after a mistake, and NextStage's sold-out crowd joined in for the first of several sing-alongs.

From that point onwards, Chris promised, things were about to "get extremely good!" So they did.

The set included a nice mix of songs from Coldplay's two albums, as well as two new songs: Moses and The One I Love. I can only say that I liked them- I couldn't grab many details from just one listen, although I think Moses was dedicated to Gwynneth Paltrow.

The band played the newer songs from A Rush of Blood to the Head more or less as they appear on that album; while I enjoyed them all, the treats for me came with the re-worked performances of the songs from Parachutes, particularly Spies and Yellow. Spies began with a slow pulsing explosion on the drums, enhanced by the beat-synchronized lighting, and it took me a while to figure out what the song was. It had a lot more energy than the album version, but it still retained the song's beautiful rhythmic groove.

Coldplay were channeling U2 all night, but Yellow is where the Irish band's influence showed the most. Solitary chords from the keyboard, haunting vocals lifting over the top, and then slamming in with that familiar guitar riff; it was almost a performance of Where the Streets Have No Name. Fantastic. Yellow was immediately followed by The Scientist, which made sense given the parallels between the two songs.

For me, the only disappointment came with the exclusion of A Rush of Blood to the Head itself; I've always thought that that song would be spectacular live, with its dramatic mood shifts. That aside, the concert was brilliant. Given the opportunity, I'll definitely be going to see Coldplay again.

Set list (as I remember it, probably not entirely accurately):
Politik
God Put a Smile Upon Your Face
The One I Love
Daylight
Trouble
Everything's Not Lost
Moses
Spies
Warning Sign
Yellow
The Scientist
Life is for Living

(encore)
Clocks
In My Place

(Adapted from the version that I posted here.

Wendy at Bathtub Gin went to the concert too.)