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,, 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.
Dressed in a tie-dye T-shirt and oozing his bouncy puppy-dog energy, Chris Martin launches into Higher Power, an electrifying entry point to the band’s non-stop barrage of hits that ensues over the two-hour set. The song premiered at the International Space Station in 2021 and tonight it’s given the same cosmic revelry, with the band’s signature LED wristbands glowing red and purple across the night like sea sparkle. “Thank you for letting us come to Western Australia,” Martin says from behind the keyboard. “We’ve been rehearsing this show for 119 concerts so I think we should be up to standard no