EDIT: Check out La Babes du Suga doing a perfectly fine cover of Spiralling over at XOs....
Well slap my ass and call me Nancy. After a spectacular meltdown on their second album (which to be fair i did eventually come to "appreciate") Keane have a solid return to form with their surprisingly poppy and boppy third set of tunes. Back in 2004, I thought my love for Tom, Tim and the other one would last forever - piano driven anthems like Somewhere Only We Know and Everybody's Changing were balanced out with more uptempo tunes such as Bend and Break. Even the odd cover version or two that slipped in (The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore in particular is a fave) were rather glorious. So when Is It Any Wonder came along with the utterly jarring use of guitars, the song made me nearly as sick as the Erasure Abba-esque rip-off video made everyone else. I'm not even sure that the album was particularly bad - just that it was so bracingly different to the glorious debut. Eventually by taking off some of the crappier self indulgent tunes and adding things like their ace cover of Under Pressure and warchild song The Night Sky, I came to terms with the betrayal but hoped for more from a third album. And bugger me, did they deliver...
Perfect Symmetry is actually the perfect marriage between the powerful melodies and harmonies evidenced on their debut album, matched with the more experimental leanings of album number two. By now you are bound to be familiar with lead off single Spiralling. It works well both as a lead off single from an album and as a statement of what they are trying to achieve with this album. Next single Lovers Are Losing is also a good indication of this. The piano is there pounding out the melody, Tom's strong voice leads the song, but now there are added synth and sounds that give it a distinctly 80s feel, with very vague ethereal hints of dance subtly floating in the background. 3 songs in and there is not a ballad in sight, but there are handclaps and "whoa-whoa-whoas" on the brilliant David Bowie pillaging Better Than This. Frankly I'm not really familiar enough with LaBow to be offended or precious by this "loving tribute" and this song is a rather jolly singalong. Hey, IT HAS HANDCLAPS!! Plus I can't help but feel Tom is singing about himself when he wails "get a grip on yourself..." You Haven't Told Me Anything Is continues this new sound, but it's the title track that soars into the epic territory of Everybody's Changing. All about searching for the answers to life, yourself, your problems - the piano driven melody is just gorgeous and a real return to form. Add to this the gospel choir layered vocals towards the end and the song just becomes europhic. This could end up challenging Everybody's Changing as my favourite Keane song ever. We'll see. You Don't See Me i picture not as a single, but if it did have a video would be one of those beautifully shot affairs where the main person moves at normal speed while the world revolves by at accelerated motion (like the clouds in the opening credits of The X-Files - D'Luv knows what i mean!!). It's almost their first real ballad of the album, but not quite.
I am rather taken with Again and Again. The verses seem to be both musically and lyrically lifted from OMD's Walking On The Milky Way. The chorus is perhaps most linked to their debut album (think This Is The Last Time). Merge the two together and you have yet another potent potential single just begging to be heard. Love those fuzzy synths. Strangely Playing Along at times sounds more like a Killers song than a Keane song, but they do some lovely echo effects at various points in the song, so it's utterly forgiveable. Also forgiveable is more musical pillaging on Pretend That You're Alone. Part You Can Call me Al, part Oxford Comma, this timpani shuffling drum beat with broken staccato piano chords leads to an increasingly perky tune about starting again and leaving the world behind. It gets more creative with synth sounds as the tune moves on, adding more handclaps and buzzy horns. Quite marvelous. Black Burning Heart is yet another corking pseudo electro up tempo tune with shades of Electric Dreams in the introduction. For some reason i'm very drawn to the lyrics of the chorus - they just seem to resonate with me at the moment ("If we could turn back, you could paper over the cracks" - has me wondering would that work. If we could go back and change things, would relationships still end up in the same place?) The album ends on a more downbeat note with Love Is The End. Yet, there's rarely a dud note here and it's a real return to form for Keane. Or if you liked them all along, then for me i'm bought back into the fold and it's yet another fourth quarter release that will fuck up my current end of year top ten best albums.....
Potential singles: Spiralling; Lovers Are Losing; Better Than This; Perfect Symmetry; Pretend That You're Alone
Other brillo bloggers reviews:
Though not particularly trashy (though come to think of it Tom did snort half of London's drug supply up his nose, which is quite trashy), this post is dedicated to the ace return of Mike PopTrashAddict. Hurrah!!
