Review: Coldplay goes big at the Hollywood Bowl

At the start of 'Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall,' the last song Coldplay performed at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night, the band flicked on halos of lasers, cued a four-on-the-floor drum beat and sang about how it wanted to 'turn the music up, I got my records on / I shut the world outside until the lights come on.'

For an act that crankier critics accuse of playing middlebrow post-indie-rock for Apple adverts, this was awfully ravey. The London quartet, one of the biggest bands to emerge in the 2000s, is certainly grounded in earnest guitar-and-piano emoting (with the good taste and huge budgets that afford Brian Eno as a producer).

But that move implies that it sees the rise of dance-music culture as a stakes-raising challenge (or maybe a threat to its livelihood). Tuesday's show, the first of a three-night Bowl stand this week, proved why Coldplay is the last stadium-sized rock band left standing in contemporary pop -- a feat perhaps unrepeatable for future rockers in a laptop era.

Perhaps the one thing that sticks in craws about Coldplay is that its four sweet-tempered goofballs, who simultaneously want to play the most flagrantly moving rock music conceivable. Gawky dudes like singer Chris Martin, a 'Colbert Report' fan who rolls around on stage floors mocking his own falsetto, can't possibly be serious when he calls a song 'Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall,' right?

Well, the music had better make us believe it. And that, more than celebrity marriages (Martin's other half is Gwyneth Paltrow) or bucktoothed love ballads, is why the band is so enormous.