Coldplay brings fireworks, singing puppets, alien masks – and a parade of hits – to the Linc

Crowd-pleasing doesn’t go quite far enough when it comes to describing a Coldplay concert. Combining an aw-shucks charm with a taste for ridiculously overblown spectacle and maniacally singable choruses, the band comes on like a cute cat video, a roller coaster ride and a marching band on parade all rolled into one.

At a nearly sold-out Lincoln Financial Field on Wednesday night, the headliner made itself just one attraction among many, at times nearly obscured by fireworks, balloons, confetti bombs, dancing space chimps on giant video screens, and an entire audience transformed into a dazzling light show via pulsing, chameleonic LED wristbands.

And that was all just in the first song, “Higher Power.” By the end of the night, the British foursome – effortlessly charismatic frontman Chris Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, bassist Guy Berryman, and drummer Will Champion – had traipsed back and forth between three stages, donned light-up alien heads, and featured a Muppet as guest duet partner on “Midnight,” from 2014′s Ghost Stories.

For many bands this would all teeter on the verge self-parody, but Coldplay has no real pretensions to puncture. Playing spaceman for a couple of songs is only a few degrees sillier than the endless run of bombastic choruses, each one so garishly commercial-ready that they almost feel unfinished without a pitchman’s voice at the end hawking a credit card or a smartphone.

As much as they’ve never really shaken the comparison to a diluted U2, Coldplay has never strived for the Irish band’s profundity. The lyrics to “The Scientist” or “A Sky Full of Stars” are about as deep as the message on a candy Valentine, doggerel marking time until the next chest-swelling chorus.

There were plenty of those to be found during the nearly two-hour show. Roughly a third of the set was culled from the band’s latest album, Music of the Spheres, the most sugary pop-oriented album of Coldplay’s career and a definite bid for a younger audience with guest turns on the album by Selena Gomez and K-pop superstars BTS (who turned up in video form during “My Universe”).

Following a brief video detailing the tour’s sustainability practices, the candy-colored shock and awe came roaring out of the gate with “Higher Power,” the first single from Music of the Spheres. Martin roused the adoring crowd, sprinting along the runway that extended half the length of the Linc field to a circular second stage in the midst of the audience – say what you will about his music, you cannot fault the man’s cardio.

The band made their way to that second stage several times throughout the evening. Champion pounded kettle drums there for “Viva La Vida,” Martin took the spotlight there for a solo rendition of “Let Somebody Go,” and it was the site for their goofy alien-head dance-off during the Chainsmokers collaboration “Something Just Like This,” which Martin performed in sign language to pre-recorded vocals.

The extensive use of backing tracks throughout the night gave the show an over-produced feel that was yet one more aspect overwhelming the four blokes in the band. One exception came near the end of the night, as the few raindrops felt during the massive singalong of “Yellow” became a downpour. The band strode to the third stage near the back of the stadium, a small in-the-round set-up where the performed a pared-down, spectacle-free version of “Sparks” from their 2000 debut Parachutes.

Promising a new ending that would have made the song a hit had it originally been released that way, Martin appended “Fly, Eagles, Fly” as the final verse, leading the stadium in a familiar “E-A-G-L-E-S” chant. As his bandmates returned to the main stage Martin improvised a brief ditty about spending Wednesday night in Philly in the rain, name-dropping Jill Scott, The Roots and Rocky Balboa while defying the weather with that arena-scale charm.

H.E.R. also showed that she knows how to play to the home field crowd, sporting an Eagles jersey for her 40-minute opening set. Without the benefit of Coldplay’s pyrotechnics the R&B singer (born Gabriella Wilson) made herself the pageantry, pairing her soaring vocals with shredding guitar solos (showing off a bit of Eddie Van Halen finger-tapping during “Hard Place”), playing keyboards for a newly-penned song, and even accompanying herself on drums for closer “We Made It.” She established her arena rock credentials, leading into her own “Glory” with a medley of the similarly stomping “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” and “We Will Rock You” as well as a cover of Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way.”