Cold Play performs songs from Mylo Xyloto and other songs. The concert starts, fireworks go off, lights flash and the audience screams in approval but what was great about the piano introduction I do not know. The song begins in earnest and the rather weak guitar line repeats over and over. Over and over as well with the vocal line “use your heart like a weapon and it hurts like heaven”; the rather short bar continues over and over with a bit of 1910 Fruitgum Company sound thrown in. When I examine the lyric line I think that “weapon and heaven” is a hasty rhyme. What is a hasty rhyme? It is the first rhyme that comes to mind, it shows a lack of lyrical work.
I have the tune running in my head after a couple of runs through the Cold Play Mylo Xyloto material and I do think the tunes are much the same not a lot of difference in melody.
Chris Martin lifts his voice and flips over into a higher pitched harmony. He does this from song to song over and over again until that vocal device becomes part of the sameness. Jonny Buckland’s guitar does sound different from other songs in the second song “Yellow” . With a couple exceptions the weak guitar is similar in tone and melody one song to the next.
“God Put a Smile Upon Your Face” starts out a bit different, poorly actually, but the fans think it is OK. The only really good guitar is played in this number. By the end of the piece I noticed a deterioration and the herding together and the anxious looks and the amount of time spent filling in by beating on their instruments tunelessly at the beginning of the good part is suspicious they seemed to be waiting for something to happen.
A lot of the piano and guitar in this performance are not very good. Things could be quite different on their recordings. I don’t know and probably will not find out. I review the poor man’s live performance option, HDTV.
The LED display and flashing lights distract from the sameness, the sameness of the piano , the sameness of the guitar, the sameness of the vocal style. The songs are the same in some way, perhaps the execution with the same speed ups and slow downs and higher pitched singing from time to time; I am not transported to another space.
“Charlie Brown”, once again a 1910 Fruitgum tune with the predictable Cold Play swells and vocal. I think the guitar is just plain poor. Do not forget that there is equipment, effects and mixing that can make not very good guitar playing sound cool.
I was advised that the great performers in rap were “Jedi MindTricks” and “Army Of The Pharaohs”. The bands “Kingdom Of Sorrow”, “Exodus” and “MachineHead” were also touted. I listened to all of them. None were of any value I thought, not in content, execution, composition, or overall effect.
Cold Play is of course immeasurably better then any of the Hip-Hoppers or Head Banger bands. Are Punk bands admissible to this group? I will review the “New York Dolls”, last months best, I think, in live performance recorded live and mixed for HDTV.
Chris Martin leans over the piano starting “Every Tear Is A Waterfall” but what relationship the music has to this theme eludes me. As the song begins I hear sound from nowhere, I think I spot other pre-recordings or effects propagating sound to provide comping and continuity.
The oh uho hoo voice wears on me. Guitar over and over the same riff degenerates into just plain noise with oo woo ooh woo and a really stupid failed dance move at the end by Chris Martin performing with Cold Play, “Mylo Xyloto” in Toronto at Much Music HQ, in the parking lot.
