Through the darkness, a familiar melody rings out across the arena. But it’s not the opening track the 60,000-strong audience was expecting. To the soaring Flying Theme from the classic 1982 film ET, Coldplay charges ceremoniously on to the stage, like a crew of astronauts preparing for liftoff.
It is a fitting entrance for the Australian premiere of Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres tour in Perth, which animates their eponymous ninth studio album with a spectacle of flying planets, confetti cannons, fireworks and delirious singalongs. It is a childhood fantasy writ-large, wavering between head-spinning nausea and starry-eyed rapture.
