Coldplay front man Chris Martin - indie's Mr Effusive - on the defensive?
Surely not. But he introduces 'High Speed', Coldplay's third song tonight for this One Live broadcast gig, with a thoughtful, "This is dedicated to everyone who bought our record, even though everyone's been slagging us off and that." Cue mass cheers of solidarity.

Not that you could hear any dissenting voices in the Great Hall tonight. Coldplay's unassuming       entrance is greeted with a reaction one would normally imagine to signal, say, a resolution to world war, or a Jimi Hendrix comeback gig. The fact that Chris Martin and band don't themselves appear to know why Coldplay are so demographic-mashingly adored doesn't hide the faint absurdity of the situation. Still, the opening 'Spies' is a pretty good tune: darkly folk-styled lamentations that most readily justify any Jeff Buckley comparisons.

However, between this and the splendid 'Everything's Not Lost', the final song before the encore, there's a lot of stuff that, were it not for the rapturous reception awarded it, would seem mere treading water. Frankly, any genius streak running through 'Sparks', bullied acoustic dithering that
wants to be shoegazing when it grows up, is lost on us.

Sure, 'Yellow' is the very definition of a solidly good song, one which is probably being selected for young couples' wedding receptions as you read this. While one brand new encore song is a less dissonant take on 'Bends'-era Radiohead, and fills that brief well enough to defy actual criticism.

But that still doesn't explain the doe-eyed madness afflicting the 1,400 people here. Chris plays a brief harmonica solo during 'Don't Panic'; the crowd spontaneously combust. Your immediate reflex is to yell, "It's a fucking mouth-organ, you idiots!" Later, he throws his towel and jumper into the crowd. They go predictably insane.

Coldplay are a band clichéd hacks would dub 'slow-burning', yet here we find a light which remains wilfully dim. While these stars shine so dazzlingly for half the country, though, it seems almost pointless protesting.

Noel Gardner

The Pilton Village Fête is Michael Eavis' annual attempt to appease local residents in the aftermath of 100,000 hippies spending half of June tramping over their doorsteps. Bands who play here often go on to headline next year's Glastonbury. In the case of Coldplay, that's almost a certainty, even if tonight's performance isn't    without its hitches.
For a start, only one of the band has turned up. Chris Martin comes on for his first solo show; the rest of Coldplay aren't here because guitarist Jon Buckland has been diagnosed with glandular fever.
"If you want me to stay I'll stay, if you want me to go, I'll fuck off," mutters a nervous Martin before an opening 'Shiver'. He needn't worry. Stripped to its bones, 'Shiver' gives him the chance to perform all kinds of tricks with his voice. He fills this cavernous tent with ease, sometimes singing falsetto where a guitar line should be, at other times just letting the ever-swelling crowd do the work for him. Two songs in, and his smile is as big as the reception he is getting. Martin has gone from being as rigid as a board to waltzing around the stage with his guitar within five minutes. Only 'Help Is Round The Corner' sounds like it belongs in a bus station, stripped naked, but for the most part Martin has everyone dancing in his palm and he knows it. 'Bigger Stronger' and 'Don't Panic' precede a lovely, piano-led 'Trouble' - the only thing missing tonight is an MTV film crew. 

Officially, this is Coldplay's first proper headline tour; more correctly, it's a one-band pitch from the Hope     Revivalist tent. From the first glimpse of eager audience members clutching silver marker pens and ready-to-sign CDs, it's clearly a message spreading like wildfire. By the time quietly effervescent singer Chris Martin closes his eyes to sing 'Shiver', it's tipped over the edge of 'gig' and into the realms of the evangelical. It's easy to see why songs that gently trap the billowing grandeur of Radiohead and The Verve under the tarpaulin of Travis' all-weather charm are pretty much today's definition of consensus politics. More vitally, though, Coldplay offer a chance to cut free of cynicism, swerving the intellectual hoops in favour of a clear emotional run. It's the kind of approach that normally means a band have all the mental rigour of a blancmange and the        ideology of a beanie hat but, somehow, Coldplay carry it off.
Maybe it's because they look so wholesome, glowing with such farm-fresh health you'd serve them Sunday lunch. Maybe it's the excitable way in which Chris declares that this is his hometown gig, or asks everyone to say hello to his parents, or announces to happy applause, "This is great! It's what you dream of at school!" so cheery and guileless you really hope somebody's warned him about talking to strangers. Maybe, though, it's just the superb guitar instincts of 'Yellow', not so much lovestruck as punch-drunk, Chris throwing back his head to sing of stars, synaesthesia and selfless devotion. It's not the only potential crossover classic they play tonight: 'Don't Panic' the very essence of in-the-church-hall-if-wet resilience brings to mind fireworks and shooting stars and all the other staple metaphors of windswept guitar passion, while the sweeping spiritual 'Everything's Not Lost' is straight from the 'Everybody Hurts' school of desk-calendar truism, and all the more effective for it. It's about communication, pure and simple. About refusing to recognise that's an impossible contradiction.
So far, then, Coldplay give us no spin, straight-edges, emotional transparency you might be forgiven for    thinking they had a career as a set square rather than rock'n'roll messiahs. It's fair to say that the things you look for in a band are not the things you want in your life: for example, you probably wouldn't want Iggy Pop anywhere near your carpets, and coming home to find someone had rearranged your kitchen in a new and challenging post-utensil form isn't an essential benchmark of domestic life. Equally, there's something           undeniably irritating about a band who try quite so hard to be ordinary, who would rather offer up the drippy  piano apologies of 'Trouble' than face up to a hammer-and-tongs fight, who tell the audience with such merry shrugging "we haven't got all the answers", when the best bands have you believing they have a smudged copy of the Book Of Life under their beds.
Yet resistance, if not futile, is churlish. As an encore, they career through 'You Only Live Twice' "Once for yourself/Once for your dreams" ridiculous optimists to the last. The sky might be falling in, but for Coldplay, it's just a shower.
Coldplay are nice lads with nice colours, and in their perspiration is written the desire to work their acoustic shenanigan into greatness. If there's a slight degree of mystification at why they're opening the show (what with their 'Shiver' single having perched briefly at Number 35), then it is to their credit that they come with neither attitude nor axe to grind. Singer Chris Martin is instead a beaming man with a sore throat holding a mug of Lemsip. Terris could murder his family, and he wouldn't have an attitude about it. He's not an attitude kind of a guy.

No matter what Ash might say, exams and rock don't mix. So although currently the focus of an A&R frenzy not seen since, ooh, last week, Coldplay are about to swap guitars for their forthcoming finals. The world, clearly, will have to wait.
On the evidence of tonight's Fierce Panda showcase that's a shame. Together since January last year, the band have only released their own sold-out 'Safety EP' but are still well worth the praise heaped on them. Judging by the record company pack assembled tonight and their forthcoming Radio 1 gig with Catatonia, Coldplay have few worries about a future beyond the exams. They plan to meet us on their own terms. Time away simply gives them a chance to work out exactly what these are.
Especially as Devon frontman Chris Martin seems too angelic to know just yet. Beaming, charmingly         self-deprecating and wearing the world's most unflattering jumper, Chris sings an acoustic ballad and then apologises for being boring. Overwhelmed at the size of the audience, he fidgets excitedly between songs and points out Steve Lamacq's presence "if you're looking for celebs".
Such naivety is puzzling when these four young and apparently well-adjusted men simultaneously sound so bleakly despairing, so uplifting and so plain beautiful. Beneath Chris' cheeky exterior, for example, is a voice somewhere between Thom Yorke's most angelic moments and Jeff Buckley's most gorgeous inflections.
It's the focus for both wonderful wisps of uplifting folk like 'Shiver' and the more grandiose epic tracks played tonight. Current Panda single 'Brothers And Sisters' is the most impressive of the latter, as fiercely determined as Embrace but less likely to be loved by your parents. Instead, it combines the quirkiness of Super Furry Animals with the classic fragility of Geneva - and the result is stunning.
The best things, it seems, come to those who have no choice but to wait.