The band are onstage playing 'Yellow' and the crowd are eating from Chris Martin's hand, but it's still difficult to truly love Coldplay.
It's hard to put a finger on, but there's something just a bit too eager about them. Something of the Macrobiotic Christian Rock Band - mostly in the way Chris Martin bounds across the stage a little too enthusiastically and does his Lord Of The Dance thing with a guitar. It's all so sincere. A bit too pleasant. Like they simply jumped into Radiohead's still-warm Hush Puppies after their older Oxford cousins went weird.
That said, it's not difficult to decipher their popularity either. The mantle of sensitive, vaguely left-field rock was vacant as soon as Thom Yorke gave up the crown. And sensitive, vaguely left-field rock is what Coldplay specialise in. Songs like 'Yellow', 'Clocks' and 'In My Place' are a perfect synthesis of the personal and the communal, and in times like these we all need some meaningful collective soul-searching. What else would they play in the sad scenes on 'Cold Feet'?
However, when the band stride onstage and launch into a storming rendition of 'Politik' their sensitive side is firmly in check. Segueing into 'God Put A Smile On Your Face' they sound defiant and alive, literally - err - pissing on Alan McGee's accusations that they were a "bunch of bedwetters." America and A-list status have obviously pumped Coldplay with confidence and at times tonight the Albert Hall feels like a scout hut.
Unfortunately it can't last. Following this impressive opening salvo, things get formulaic - particularly on the more unremarkable tracks from 'Parachutes' - as the sub-U2 guitar dominates and Martin's behaviour starts to grate. At one point he disses The Corrs, but you can bet most people who bought 'A Rush Of Blood To Head' have 'Talk On Corners' on the same shelf, and for much the same reasons.
Ultimately Martin sends himself up as a bit of a twat, but fortunately he's the kind of twat who wins Grammies, steps out with Gwyneth Paltrow and can pen a song as beautiful as 'The Scientist'. When he breaks out into the aforementioned ballad - it's gorgeousness not dimmed by familiarity - and a stately rendition of 'Everything's Not Lost' then victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat. It sounds like he means every word.
Wrapping up with 'In My Place' and a few lines from Tatu's 'All The Things She Said' and the crowd are finally on their feet. Maybe it's churlish to criticise - tonight is a charity event after all, and the real stars are the thirty-or-so teenage cancer patients sitting stage-left - but Coldplay are only halfway to amazing. A little more heartbreak and a little less 'sincerity' goes a long way.
