Here comes the summer! Sun’s out, guns out, buns out and of course bands are very much out and about playing in the nation’s finest wide open spaces. Exhibit A is the Principality Stadium in Wales. We’ve never seen an entire city taken over by one band before but by the middle of a sundrenched midweek afternoon Cardiff is already bristling with bars pumping out ‘Paradise’ and the t-shirted masses and their missuses hitting the ‘Yellow’ cocktails, because COLDPLAY are playing in town.
Very clever they are, too: in Glasgow last summer Edwyn Collins special-guested, tonight the local artists playing local music for local people are Kelly Jones from those there Stereophonics and the Bridgend Male Voice Choir. One of these will perform a rousing version of ‘Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau’. In fact the choir delivers it twice when Chris Martin realises nobody can hear the first rendition. Not for Coldplay a brusque “Hello Wales!” gaffa taped to the mic stand to remind the singer which postcode they’re performing in tonight.
This sums up the way Coldplay play the enormo crowd: if stadium gigs can somehow be informal, casual affairs even with thousands upon thousands upon thousands of cocktailed-up punters then Coldplay have mastered the art of the warmhearted hoedown, engaging with punters, performing from various points around the Principality and mixing the stark indie sounds of 2000 with the expansive pop sheenery of now. Not only that, but the Pandaman has now seen COLDPLAY’s Music Of The Spheres tour three times in the past year and the live experience actually gets even madder each time with the balloons and the illuminated wristbands and the alien headgear and the Muppets and the…oh, you know. Quite good fun, love the end credits.
Over at the O2 in London’s Docklands you kinda wish BLACK KEYS had cribbed the merest flash of colour from the Coldplay rainbow as their first London show for eight long years is an earnest affair, the duo’s blue collar ethic taken to its logical workmanlike conclusion. ‘Lonely Boy’ resonates with the dads because of its secret history soundtracking The Sports Bar on TalkSPORT and ‘Little Black Submarines’ gets the sonic youth quaking, but even the cheery punk schtick of Black Keys as a cheeky twosome is undermined by a full live band standing behind our heroes. I guess that’s why they call it the blues, eh?
On a slightly less grand scale, from the O2 to the Old Blue Last in Shoreditch we go, where there are pop melodies a’plenty with SENSIBLE MUSIC, a Brummie combo with a penchant for synthy ’80s pop with some neatly sub-gothic guitar and some morosely uplifting melodies concerned with love, loss and loose morals. Top of the OBL bill are the cannily named KLITTENS, an all-grrrl fivesome from The Netherlands. They are compelling and fun and fuzzy and trying very hard in a casually cool ‘oh-this-guitar-thing?-whatever’ kind of way. The Klittens sing a cute tune about their merchandise before their set builds to a suitably giant…oh, just insert your own last line here.
Back in the open air we find our panda bands The Manatees and Bag Of Cans playing The Scoop, which is a stage in a mini-amphitheatre snuggled into the shadow of Tower Bridge. It’s part of the Summer By The River run of free events and performances which attracts furious goths and curious tourists alike. First on are five teenagers from Exeter called DIE TWICE. Like Black Keys it’s the blues they’re singing, with the frontman giving it some strong Jim Morrison jive, but theirs is more of a leftfield alt.rock frolic, with duelling guitars, punk rock bass and excellent young person haircuts.
Owing to a series of curious gigging events we end up catching the openers again at Dream Bags Jaguar Shoes and The Victoria in June, which means we actually see Die Twice play live thrice. Which is easy for us to type.
PANDAMAN’S 2023 PERFORMANCE TOTAL: 205
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