Keane album drops as financial crisis hits
It’s tough to imagine that America’s crumbling economy would affect a giant rock band like Keane, but even they’re worried that people will forgo buying their new disc and download it for free instead.
“As the group’s drummer I think people should pay for music,” says the London-based trio’s beat keeper Richard Hughes. “But I understand that some people won’t be able to afford it.
“It’s a bit like Barack Obama when he says health care is a right, not a privilege. Well, music is a right and I’d rather people hear it than not.”
The fact that the world’s love of excess and overspending is coming to a shocking halt right as the band releases its third album, Perfect Symmetry, is an odd coincidence, since the new music touches on these themes.
“The record is about this kind of stuff,” he says. “We know we’re pissing away billions of pounds on bombs and guns and warships. We should be building better hospitals and homes for the people who walk around London that don’t have homes.”
While lyrics such as “maybe you find, life is unkind and over so soon, there is no golden gate, there’s no heaven waiting for you,” from the title track is dark, the music is anything but. In fact, Keane have transformed themselves from a brooding, piano-driven band into upbeat ’80s rockers.
Hughes says Keane is just trying new things. “We’ve always loved bands that surprise you with their next record,” he says, citing David Bowie, Talking Heads and Depeche Mode as influences. “Take Radiohead. They’re always trying to do something bolder and different each time. It’s difficult to do, but once you establish yourself you can do it and it gives you total freedom.”
While it’s important to note the new tools in the band’s musical arsenal, you can’t help but listen to the album and think of the elephant that’s still in the room: singer Tom Chaplin’s addiction.
The singer went to rehab in August 2006 to kick an alleged drug habit that made recording their last album, Under The Iron Sea, extremely difficult. The band avoided the topic on the new disc, because to them the story is old news.
“It’s all over the music on the second album,” admits Hughes. “It was a very dark record, and by now it feels like ancient history.”
During the most trying times of Chaplin’s addiction, Hughes wasn’t sure the band would continue on. But they have, which might explain the happier sounds emanating from the new disc. “We enjoy playing together again,” he says. “It was as if we broke down, got fixed and then we were sent on our way.”
