Coldplay, Imagine Dragons, London Grammar at the iTunes Festival SXSW

The iTunes Festival 2014 at a SXSW, the first ever taking place outside London, started with the beautiful, sparse sounds of London Grammar and the powerful vocals of Hannah Reid. Opening with the track "Hey now" in semi-darkness the band set the tone for a powerful, haunting set of tracks from the 2013 release "If You Wait". "Strong" one of the band's anthemic tracks with a steady, relentless cadence was delivered fiercely by the Nottingham band that is currently having a tremendous impact internationally. The band closed with a powerful rendition of "Wasting my young years”, all in all a fantastic live act aided tonight by impeccable sound at the venue.

Coming on stage to the visual of a rising moon, Imagin Dragons had a hugely energetic opening with the track “Fallen" including lots of tribal drum beating, epic visuals of nature landscapes and even pyrotechnics, in a performance leaving us to wonder could they go any bigger?
They could, with another epic monster of a track "Amsterdam", with the 5 piece giving it all with the support of evocative visuals overlaid with live footage.
The relentless set continues with the song “Tiptoe” and then the hit “Hear Me”, drawing big cheers from the crowd. The latter shows that there's a rockier, edgier side to the band that comes through in a live setting: the track made heavier and had an explosive ending. Reynolds remarked on the honour of sharing the stage with London Grammar "I've been listening to their album non stop”, he admitted listening to “Strong” at least 50 times in the past few days. Reynolds is not a bad singer himself, starting “It’s time” with an incredible tone before launching in the full track. The bands' anthemic slant is abandoned for a little with the more playful "Rocks" featuring a syncopated drum duet between Daniel Platzman and Reynolds. The band finds time for a couple of tracks from their repertoire "The River" and "Cha-Ching”, Referencing to the band's roots five years ago in Las Vegas as poor musicians he gave a shoutout to Berklee College of Music, a school from which all members come aside from himself - "a college drop-out". In fact, if there’s anything to fault with Imagine Dragon’s set tonight is that there is a sense that nothing could ever go wrong on stage as they are simply too polished as a rock band. Returning to the most recent material, "Demons" brought the band back to more familiar territory launching into a scorching version of “Radioactive” backed by the visual of a burning sun. This is the song that had the most impact on their career: released in 2012, it has sold more digital copies than any other rock song recording 6.6 million sales as of August 2013 in the US alone.
The set ends with "give it up", with beautiful visuals of flying lanterns being broadcast all through the venue, and an unexpected rock jam.

Coldplay have been away for quite some time working on their new album and this is their first full-blown live appearance in a while. After a short stage changeover, with engineers powering on to test all the gadgets required for the stage show, they got started with the new track “Always in my head”, an atmospheric number to ease the audience into tonight’s set. Red lights come on and it’s time for "Charlie Brown", proving to be hit with the audience. The gig’s lightning gear deserves a special mention, it was extraordinary with several different textures and colours coming into play. As the venue is quite small there was no space for the full-blown production Coldplay take on the road: it was a similar setup to that found at the Roundhouse in London, the home of the iTunes Festival for the past several years. And it’s nice to know superstars are human after all as Chris Martin messed up the piano intro for “Paradise” shrugging it off without a care in the world. As the gig was live streamed, Martin gave a nod to the people that were watching the concert on different time zones. “Magic” was another new track making its live debut tonight, showing a more sparse, minimal version of Coldplay, a band now keen to explore electronic sounds further.
“Clocks” of course set the room on fire whilst “Another’s Arms” was the third track making its debut: another sparse, atmospheric number.
“Viva la Vida” was a great showcase of Chris Martin’s voice that is as good as ever. Responding to the people singing along to the middle eight he said: "We've been in the studio for a long long time and this reminds us how great it is to do what we do”.
“Every Teardrop is a Waterfall” is very energetic and featured an explosion of white party streamers that covered all of the band’s instrument making it a great sight but also making it near impossible for them to play - especially the guitarist.
For the encore Coldplay saved the new single “Midnight”, with the band’s drummer Will Champion using special instrument - the Reactable table - to produce some of the electronic sound effects. The Reactable was also used by Bjork on her tour a few years ago. A new beginning for a band that has evolved its sound with every release but managed to keep its body of work pretty coherent.

A big first night for the iTunes Festival in Austin that will be featuring SoundGarden, Kendrik Lamar, Pitbull and Keith Urban as its headliners for the next four nights.


(Andrea Leonelli)