Keane

Jack Robinson reviews

Keane
Hopes and Fears Distributed by
Island

• Year: 2004
• Rating: 9/10
• Cat. No: CID8145

Track listing:

1. Somewhere Only We Know
2. Bend And Break
3. We Might As Well Be Strangers
4. Everybody’s Changing
5. Your Eyes Open
6. She Has No Time
7. Can’t Stop Now
8. Sunshine
9. This Is The Last Time
10. On A Day Like Today
11. Untitled 1
12. Bedshaped

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So, what to make of Keane?, A rock-and-roll band so forcibly un-rock-and-roll that they went one further than the White Stripes, who only banished the bass guitar from proceedings, and removed all guitars from their unique sound. However, the sound that erupts on this, their debut, is not that of the White Stripes. Keane themselves must be thoroughly sick and tired of the comparison I am about to make, but it does ring true. With nothing but drums (Richard Hughes), piano (Tim Rice-Oxley), emotional vocals (Tom Chaplin, who bears a striking resemblance to Starsailor singer James Walsh) and some small electronic sounds on the side, Keane seem to be “The New Coldplay“. No bad thing, as goodness only knows what’s going to happen to Chris Martin’s bunch post-Gwyneth and Apple. And let’s not forget that, like Coldplay, these are public-school lads. And, one final point on the Coldplay thing – Rice-Oxley was at one point asked to be Coldplay’s keyboard player.

So, enough comparisons, what’s the album like? Well, it opens with the beautiful breakthrough single, Somewhere Only We Know. The first time I heard this record was on the radio as I was waking up one dreary Thursday morning. It was a moment of sheer charm as I lay considering the day ahead. Following on from that would be a hard task, but Bend And Break more than does the job. If released as a single, it could become the band’s ‘Clocks’ – a ubiquitous tune that, no matter how often you hear it, it never makes you want to strangle the nearest TV muzak compiler. It’s the first of a few Keane songs to reference ‘The Other Side’ – a tip of the hat to David Gray? It’s got all the makings of a huge song – if released, it could be huge. If not, it will always remain a fans’ favourite.

The next song takes the tone down a bit. We Might As Well Be Strangers begins with a sensitive ‘quiet piano, aching lyrics’ part, in which Chaplin claims that ‘we might as well be strangers in another world’. After that, the song does perk up a bit, but it doesn’t get any happier lyrically. It’s a moment well worth savouring. Following is the follow-up single to Somewhere Only We Know, Everybody’s Changing. It’s a song about getting lost in the quagmire of everyday that manages to remain deceptively upbeat and was, if we’re honest, a killer choice of single.

Track Five sees a change of direction. Your Eyes Open is an edgy number, in which you can sense anger and injustice in Chaplin’s lyric: ‘it’s a lonely place you have run to / Morning comes / And you don’t want to know me any more’. She Has No Time, which follows, opens very creepily, before Tom Chaplin’s voice is heard virtually alone. It follows on from Your Eyes Open, ‘you think your days are ordinary / and no-one ever thinks about you’. Can’t Stop Now opens with a huge, roaring piano part, which subsides temporarily for Chaplin’s verse, but comes back in for the chorus, thankfully, where Chaplin bemoans that he ‘has troubles of his own’.

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Sunshine is another one with a creepy opening part, and this doesn’t change throughout the piece. Chaplin calls himself an idiot because ‘only some idiot would let you go / But if I’m one thing / then that’s the one thing / I should know’. This Is The Last Time adresses his obviously dependant lover in an MI5 kind-of way – ‘This is the last time / that I will say these words … the first of many lies’. On A Day Like Today starts in a similar way to Sunshine, but veers into a proper piano ballad at the 1:20 mark, and just grows in volume, in a similar way to Snow Patrol’s recent hit ‘Run’, and leaves you with a feeling of awe.

The penultimate track, Untitled 1 is a creepy Radiohead-esque ballad with lines likes ‘a house on fire / a wall of stone’. It’s the final song on the album to use the words ‘the other side’. At around 2:15, it all goes very Moby, but, arguably, the song is better for it. The final track, Bedshaped is another anthem in the making. It starts off sounding as though Rice-Oxley is infatuated with all the sound effects he can make, but continues with a soft vocal and piano line. The chorus is a joyous one, with some brilliantly written lines both musically and lyrically. The second verse goes back to the first’s format, as does the next chorus. According to the lyrics booklet, it should end at 3:18, but all the synthesised choirs and Doctor Who-esque noises follow for another minute and a half, with Chaplin repeating the chorus over the top. A classic-in-waiting.

But what of the album overall? The songs can be divided into two categories – the creepily mourning ones, and the upbeat, deceptively poppy ones. They’re well balanced, although there is a section in the middle of the album where you get the feeling that they overdid it on the creepiness a bit. Of course some of the songs sound the same – that’s an inherent problem if you ditch the guitars. All the effects that can be done on guitar just can’t be replicated on piano, and despite the best efforts of the electro-squiffery, after about 50 minutes, you do begin to notice it. It’s not such a bad thing though – because the majority of it is so damn good, you wouldn’t really mind if the melodies were played on a Mongolian Nose-flute.

And on that slightly weird note, I’ll say one more thing. Keane have made one of the year’s essential albums. Buy it.

Review copyright © Jack Robinson, 2004. E-mail Jack Robinson

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