These fresh-faced London boys came within a hair's breadth of winning this year's Mercury Music Prize, but were pipped in the final furlong by Damon Gough a.k.a. Badly Drawn Boy. A few months ago, Coldplay were just another NME Bratpacker band, brimming with wide-eyed enthusiasm and charming naivet e; on Monday night at the Olympia Theatre, they were the New Lords of Indie, the successors-elect to Jeff Buckley and Radiohead, and the objects of a million youngsters' spiritual fantasies.
Some of these same youngsters packed the Dame Street venue to the gods, and they knew every word to Coldplay's debut album, Parachutes. Chris Martin, the band's tall, shambling singer, seemed bemused by the heightened hero-worship which has come in the wake of the Top Ten single, Yellow, but still displayed sure-footed confidence in his band's ability to stir some deeper emotions.
If Yellow is Coldplay's Bitter Sweet Symphony, then new single, Trouble, is The Drugs Don't Work - not quite as catchy but packing a more resonant kick. We Never Change, High Speed and Sparks are big musical bearhugs, gentle and warm but still able to snap hearts in two.
In the teen-idol atmosphere of the Olympia, however, there was never any chance of Coldplay's tunes reaching below the outer epidermis, and so the band duly trotted out Don't Panic, Shiver and Everything's Not Lost, finishing a far-too-short set with a new song, In My Place.
We wanted to be transported by Coldplay, but we just got pleasantly shuffled around a bit.
