At GM Place on Saturday, June 20

Nice guys don’t always finish last, but they generally make for terrible rockstars. Chris Martin and his bandmates—guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, and drummer Will Champion—seem like guys mothers would love to see their daughters bring home: clean-cut, well-mannered, and wealthy as hell. But being marriage material doesn’t lend itself to being a captivating performer, a theory proven every time Coldplay has played in Vancouver up until now, from its shaky North American debut at the Commodore in 2001 to some less-than-transcendent shows at the Orpheum and GM Place thereafter.

When the English rockers closed out the Pemberton Festival last year, they seemed like changed men—sharper, bolder, and gripping the attention of listeners hundreds of yards away. Maybe it was their French Revolution wardrobe, maybe it was the endorsement of hip rappers like Kanye West and Jay-Z, or maybe it was the strength of their Brian Eno–assisted fourth album, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends. Whatever the reason, Coldplay finally seemed comfortable in its role as the decade’s biggest band.

That sense grew stronger on June 20 at GM Place, when the Londoners kicked off their two-night run in Vancouver, the 88th city they’ve played on a tour that’s lasted over a year. Coldplay’s growing mastery of the live arena should be no surprise; the band’s strung together more hits this decade than any rock outfit on earth, songs that sound best when they’re echoing out across the vast expanse of a cellphone-lit stadium.

It’s often said that Coldplay is a kind of Radiohead lite, but Martin and his mates are far too cheery for that comparison. Last Saturday, on songs like “Clocks” and “Lovers in Japan”, the band placed frictionless melodies over a four-on-the-floor kick to reproduce the euphoric highs of progressive-house music. The Englishmen acknowledged that debt halfway through the show, setting up on a small light-filled stage at the end of a catwalk and cranking out machine-driven versions of “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face” and the Kraftwerk-sampling “Talk”.

Later, they migrated to the back of the arena to play three acoustic songs on a tiny platform halfway up the lower bowl, including a cover of Neil Diamond’s “I’m a Believer”, a karaoke moment that could have been awkward, but wasn’t. Martin’s a master of those dorky-but-likable gestures, his favourite dance move an arched-back flail that finds him literally bending over backward to keep people entertained.

All that rhythm-challenged writhing and carrying on wouldn’t work if it weren’t for his indelible melodies, like the ones that powered early hits such as “Yellow” and “Fix You” over the concert’s first half, and those in “Viva La Vida”, which—plagiarism lawsuits notwithstanding—suggest there is plenty more to come. Those thirsting for the kind of bigger-than-life spectacle that AC/DC and U2 will surely deliver here later this year would have been disappointed with Coldplay’s relatively straightforward show. Backed by a basic projection screen and a few giant lightbulb-shaped chandeliers, Martin and his friends had little more to offer than their songs and their smiles. But what songs, and what smiles. Even your mother thinks so.