Their new album may be called “Moon Music,” but Coldplay took the stage at a strangely sunny hour for a rare club show at Brooklyn’s Music Hall of Williamsburg on Monday.
I mean, it was still late afternoon, not even evening yet, when the alt-rock giants shrunk themselves down to everyday life size at the 650-capacity venue that was infinitely more intimate than their last local concerts at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ.
“Getting the band Coldplay to perform before 9 p.m is one of the most difficult things in the world,” Coldplay frontman Chris Martin told the crowd at the private SiriusXM concert that is now available to stream on the service.
“And the reason we’re playing so early this afternoon is because tomorrow we’re doing the ‘Today’ show that starts at, like, 3:15 a.m.,” he continued, joking that “this is really just a sound check for that in some way.”
All kidding aside about their start way before normal rock star hours, though, Coldplay is as responsible as it gets for a band whose primary audience has hit middle age right along with them. And as such, they have done their due diligence on the promo rounds for their 10th studio album “Moon Music” — with, as they recently announced, only two more to go — hitting the “Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” and “Saturday Night Live” before their SiriusXM show and Tuesday morning’s “Today” appearance.
They’ve been working New York like most acts with far less pedigrees than them do these days — still trying to sell their new songs even if most people still just want to hear “Yellow,” “Clocks” and “Viva La Vida.”
“When you’re an older band, I know it frustrates a lot of people because we’re still doing new songs, and I know that’s annoying for some of you,” said Martin, ever boyish and wiry at 47.
“But you know, once upon a time, even that song ‘Viva La Vida’ was new, and everyone in the room was like, ‘What the f–k is this?’… Every new song we have, lots of people say it’s terrible, and then 10 years later, it’s a worldwide super classic.”
To that extent, Coldplay opened with the atmospheric title track of “Moon Music” before a solo Martin was joined by the rest of the band: guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman and drummer Will Champion.
They hit their stride with the feel-good vibes of “feelslikeimfallinginlove,” the “Moon Music” single that — charts be damned — is another classic Coldplay anthem.
They switched from that Max Martin-produced pop bliss to the driving, U2-esque rock of “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face” from their 2002 masterpiece “A Rush of Blood to the Head.”
It was a jolt that was no longer as jarring as it once was: Coldplay is as much pop as it is rock now.
Other new songs such as “We Pray” — where Coldplay was joined by Palestinian-Chilean singer Elyanna and Argentine star Tini — and the soul-disco bop “Good Feelings” featuring Nigerian songstress Ayra Starr showed the global power of the group.
Coldplay also debuted a new song, “The Karate Kid,” from the deluxe version of “Moon Music,” with Martin starting and stopping at the piano while delivering the falsetto feels — as if he was working it out for him and the band in real-time.
Then Coldplay indulged themselves for the “superfans” with the 10-minute “Coloratura” from 2021’s “Music of the Spheres,” which felt like a prelude to the space-trippiness that’s heard on “Moon Music.”
Afterward, Martin said, “OK, let’s play ‘Yellow.’ Thank you for letting us do that.”
But while again finding “something beautiful” in “Yellow” — as he does every single time — Martin may have found another Coldplay heart-melter in the new piano ballad “All My Love,” which ended the show before it was even dark outside.
