Keane - Night Train [EP] (2010)

Tracklist:
1. House Lights
2. Back in Time
3. Stop for a Minute
4. Clear Skies
5. Ishin Denshin
6. Your Love
7. Looking Back
8. My Shadow





Musical Confusion – 6,5/10

After hearing 2008’s Perfect Symmetry, I was positive about following further Keane releases and when I heard they would release a new EP entitled Night Train, I was pretty curious. The mini-album on the other hand was pretty much a letdown. I bet a lot of fans wanted to hear more of the great piano rock the guys made their mark on the music world with. But unfortunately, Keane tried very hard not to use their trademark here. The positive step: they try to renew their sound.

It’s pretty much a continuation of what we’ve heard on Perfect Symmetry’s lead single “Spiralling”. A lot of synthesizers dominate the scene combined with bombastic, sometimes beat box-like drums. Actually, most of the material on this EP sounds like recycled 80s synth pop, with a dash of Keane, mostly only to be recognized by the voice of Tom Chaplin, which saves most songs from being totally unbearable, and the trademark bombastic drums by Richard Hughes. On one particular song, keyboardist Tim Rice-Oxley even takes the lead vocals, to even take away from the song what it needed the most: a sign to make sure this is Keane. Rice-Oxley does not have a bad voice, but it sounds a bit too standard, whereas usual singer Chaplin has a very unique voice with lots of possibilities and even some similarities to early Freddie Mercury. More songs feature different vocalists as Keane chose to collaborate with other artists. Japanese pop artist Tigarah features on the abominable “Ishin Denshin”, which has the most annoying and happy chorus in the world and is not at all enjoyable in the verses, where Tigarah groans a few words in Japanese. This song of all makes it clear that Keane is just trying to find the boundaries of their can, which in itself is not bad at all.

Examples of good or at least better collaborations are those with Somali-Canadian rapper K’naan. Now, I’m not at all a fan of rap music, mostly because it’s all just some beat and some rambling about chicks. K’naan is different; on the lead single “Stop for a Minute” for example, he sings a verse which he does very well, and later he raps the bridge. His voice is not low and pimpy like most rappers, but rather high-pitched and fragile. It really fits the song, which is easily one of the best of the mini-album, not because it’s so much trademark Keane, but because it’s very catchy. The second collaboration with K’naan is “Looking Back”, but this one is not as mighty as the other. As with “Your Love”, as with “Back in Time”, as with “Clear Skies”, the song has some nice hooks here and there but in fact it’s just a piece of 80s synth pop with a modern touch to it. And this really does not attract me. Especially “Your Love” is the worst, due to synthesizer overload. The EP ends with traditional Keane style in “My Shadow”. At first it’s a ballad but later the epicness of the chorus embraces you.

So in fact this EP is not really a worthy follow-up to Perfect Symmetry, mostly because it is influenced too much by the 80s synth pop bands like Duran Duran, early Talk Talk and Ultravox. Still, Night Train contains enough to fascinate for a few listens. Afterwards, you’ll just put it in a drawer and never take it out again. Recommended only to die hard Keane fans.

Strongest tracks: “Stop for a Minute” and “My Shadow”.
Weakest tracks: “Ishin Denshin” and “Your Love”.

Keane - Perfect Symmetry (2008)

Tracklist:
1. Spiralling
2. The Lovers are Losing
3. Better than This
4. You Haven't Told Me Anything
5. Perfect Symmetry
6. You Don't See Me
7. Again and Again
8. Playing Along
9. Pretend That You're Alone
10. Black Burning Heart
11. Love is the End


The Perfect Symmetry – 8/10

As soon as I heard that piano rock band Keane added guitars for the first time ever, this album could not escape my attention. For the first time in my life I was listening to a Keane album, and I was quite pleasantly surprised. The lads from Great Britain make strong piano-driven pop music with catchy vocals, yet they are not your everyday band. Keane has, like Coldplay, that one thing that makes them different from your average pop band: a unique sound. The band is unique in almost every way. The fact that they are very piano-based is one, but Tom Chaplin’s vocals are really one-of-a-kind. He sings with a clear, present voice, has a great vocal range and often uses cool metrics in his lyrics like on “The Lovers Are Losing”. He can be a bit annoying when he sings gently though. Combine that with Tim Rice-Oxley’s unique piano arrangements and Richard Hughes’ energetic drums and you’ve got a cool trio with a unique sound. What did the addition of guitars result in?

Keane is quite a synthesizer-based band and the addition of guitars did not change that very attribute. Where some might have expected a major change in sound, it’s not really showing here. The guitars mostly are clean and just play the chords like on opening track “Spiralling”. There are certainly songs where they are a bit more audible and more adding to the song like “Pretend That You’re Alone” and eventually we have one song with a sole guitar on a light distortion carrying the main theme in “You Haven’t Told Me Anything”. As said earlier, the main instruments are still the piano and the synths. I don’t believe that this is a shortcoming at all, for this is the proper way to accompany Tom Chaplin’s vocals in these happy songs with their great melodies. For I think that is the strength of Keane and Perfect Symmetry: vocal melodies and their lyrics. Chaplin’s lyrics often consist of very catchy and memorable phrases with great metaphors within them and they’re sung on this melody that just fits the music behind it like a piece fits in the puzzle. Often he finds the words that not only fit the metric of the verse or chorus but also sound very catchy. A more guitar oriented accompaniment wouldn’t do enough justice to this unique way of singing.

Having described the overall music, let me get a bit into the details and the highlights. The highlight of this album is hard to point at. From the very first track to the very last one the album is solid and hardly gets weaker. There’s energy throughout, mostly due to the drums of Mr. Hughes. The album begins with the jungle sounds of “Spiralling”, just before it explodes into a bombastic pop song with a slightly upbeat theme. The synths rise high above all other instruments and when Chaplin arrives in the verses the piano takes over from the synths and all the attention is drawn to the great vocal melodies and metrics. The second track “The Lovers are Losing” is my absolute favorite. While it also begins with a heavy synth-overload, this one really shines in the chorus. The verses, accompanied with a soft guitar plucking at the background, feature already catchy lyrics, but when the chorus begins Chaplin has his finest hour with these great metrics and the lyrics fitting so well within them. “Better than This” continues in the same vein and features some energetic drums and some clapping on the beats. Again we have the guitar playing clean chords without changing the Keane-sound too much. The chorus is just more of the great melodies. We have a more guitar oriented theme on “You Haven’t Told Me Anything”, which adds a little variation to the album. The tone is also a bit less cheerful here but nonetheless gives Chaplin enough space for some more great metrics. The title track features the recognizable Keane piano theme, but also sounds a bit more sad and emotional than the first few songs, which creates a more epic chorus, where Chaplin really adds lots of emotion.

We have our first ballad in the shape of “You Don’t See Me”. This also features the trademark use of pianos and the clear vocals. A real highlight here is the bridge where Chaplin sings high and thus adding a lot more to the song. Where “Again and Again” is a more cheerful song in the vein of the first few tracks, an attempt at an epic is being found in “Playing Along”. This one is quite gentle in sound and starts off with a Coldplay-ish theme, which is being Keanified as soon as Chaplin starts to sing. This track pretends to be just a ballad when you hear the relaxing chorus and verses until you get to the ‘turn up the volume’-part. At first it replaces a chorus and remains quite unnoticed, but later it comes back with much more powerful arrangements, featuring our dearest Richard Hughes who is having a good time slamming the drums. “Pretend That You’re Alone” and “Black Burning Heart” are two happy pop songs with the great metrics and lyrics as we know from the first few tracks. Last and least of the album comes “Love Is the End”, which is quite a nice ballad in itself, but is the only song on the album where Chaplin sounds very tedious and annoying. I must add, it doesn’t always annoy me.

All in all, I must conclude Perfect Symmetry to be a great album. There’s a very cheerful atmosphere all over the album, with a few exceptions here and there, and there are great lyrics with great metrics. If you are a bit sad, just listen to this release by Keane and you’ll be cheery again. I would like to recommend this to fans of the pop genre, though I wouldn’t recommend listening to this if you got a headache.

Strongest tracks: “The Lovers are Losing”, “Perfect Symmetry”, “Again and Again” and “Pretend That You’re Alone”.