Well, had you asked me what I thought of them a month or two ago, just before Coldplay released 'Livin La Vida Loca' (or whatever it was called), I would have told you quite firmly, 'Interesting to read about because Chris Martin constantly seems on the edge of a nervous breakdown, but too fucking boring to ever actually put on the record.'

Then they released their fourth, Brian Eno produced album. The big cheesy choruses were replaced by evocative ambiances and daring, meandering new approaches to making music (relative to their old stuff, at least). Suddenly, they released something as musically interesting as their press presence had always suggested they could be.

And so it was with new-found confidence in their avante-garde leanings that the band headlined Summer Sonic in a way that no other band could...

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The show climaxed with the band being joined onstage by Alicia Keyes, who played piano on ‘Clocks’. She didn't have a microphone so just waved a lot, looking a bit lost and awe-struck. It was still very good, mind you. Chris Martin introduced her on stage as ‘the most beautiful woman in the world… except for my wife.’ I'm guessing he caught a glimpse of Gwyneth looking disapprovingly from the wings and added that final compensatory clause as an afterthought so as to avoid marital bickering all the way home. Or not.

Against a backdrop of the French Romantic painting by Eugène Delacroix, ‘Liberty Leading The People’ (used as the album artwork for ‘Viva La Vida’) they performed in costumes aping the style of French Revolutionaries, just as they've been doing on the rest of the tour - giving them a way more interesting visual edge than back in the days when they used to dress like geography teachers.

Perhaps trying to compensate for Coldplay's last festival headline slot at Fuji Rock a few years back, where Chris Martin walked out on stage and shouted 'SAYONARA!' (Japanese for 'Goodbye') after one song, the curly haired choir-boy spent a remarkable amount of the performance communicating in admirable, if often confused, Japanese. Not that anyone minded. Even if his grammar was up shit creek, all was forgiven when he broke into a section of a song by Japanese pop-juggernauts SMAP. The response was frenetic.

Early on in the set, during ‘Politik’, Martin changed the lyrics of the song to sing, ‘Sixty thousand Japanese people watching us / Let Alicia Keyes always play with us’, giving a hint of the special performance that was still to come. He also seemed to spend a lot of the performance running off the stage and through the crowd. Here's the moment his little legs got the better of him during 'Fix You':

Elsewhere the band performed all the songs you'd expect to hear, reflecting the various stages of their career. For 'The Scientist’, all four members of the band ran into a specially constructed podium in the middle of the crowd, performing a stripped-down acoustic version of the song, followed by a harmonica-infused 'DWNC'. I got a video of that, but I can't really post it here, sorry, but if you're wiley you might find it elsewhere on the web (ssshhh!).

They even gave Tokyo a reason to dance, playing a thumping remix of talk, and a spruced-up, wah-wah enhanced version of 'God Put A Smile Upon Your Face' that sounded like the Doctor Who theme tune.

Then, after they finished, there was a massive firework display.

Here's the setlist:

Life In Technicolour
Violet Hill
Politik
In My Place
Viva La Vida
42
Fix You
Chinese Sleep Chant
God Put A Smile On Your Face
Speed Of Sound
SMAP Song
Yellow
Lost!
The Scientist (on podium)
DWNC (on podium)

Talk Remix
Clocks (with Alicia Keyes)
Lovers In Japan
Death and All His Friends
The Escapist

All in all: bloody beautiful!