Coldplay Comparisons

Following hot on the heels of Coldplay success (and current absence) is the newly crowned epic pop outfit Keane, Britain’s official “next big thing” this year. Treading the same mellow, melodic path as Chris Martin and company, Keane is the alternative band that even your parents could take to.

Read the full article here.After a phenomenal debut that appears to be a certified indie classic, newcomer Brit rock outfit Keane is fast looking to take bigger steps abroad. ZACK YUSOF gets on the line with the biggest band, so far, in Britain this year.

THE typical record company attitude towards British alternative bands in Malaysia nowadays is that they are notoriously hard to promote unlike their ultra commercial and infinitely less interesting American counterparts. Apparently, these acts are viewed as too controversial, too intelligent or too ironic for the predictable tastes of “no-brains-required” format radio here. You can pick your excuse.

When is the last time you heard a Radiohead track or even a whiff of The Streets on the airwaves in this country? Never.

So how about Franz Ferdinand, anyone? Didn’t think so.

In the recent years, the only rare Brit breakthrough act was the multi-million unit-shifting Coldplay, who’s universal appeal makes a mockery of the national radio’s unwarranted bias towards British acts.

Following hot on the heels of Coldplay success (and current absence) is the newly crowned epic pop outfit Keane, Britain’s official “next big thing” this year. Treading the same mellow, melodic path as Chris Martin and company, Keane is the alternative band that even your parents could take to.

While local radio may invariably find grounds to dismiss Keane’s catchy, anthemic rock from our airwaves, the rest of the world seems to be catching to Keane’s vast potential quickly.

Touted by the impressionable Brit music press as “the new Coldplay” and “one of the greatest British bands to emerge in the last 10 years,” Keane has emerged as a household name in record time, in the Britain at least. Comprising baby-faced front man Tom Chaplin, gangly and slightly dishevelled pianist Tim Rice-Oxley and drummer Richard Hughes, the band formed in 1997 at a posh Hastings secondary school.

After attracting acclaim last year with a deal with London’s Fierce Panda (the influential indie label that housed early Idlewild, Coldplay and Supergrass), it can’t be denied Keane had a steady start to the top of the pile. The group’s Everything Changes single from Fierce Panda has been trading hands at exorbitant prices. The indie fans were hooked. But the masses were ripe for the taking – plying the dingy indie club circuit and playing music festivals followed next. An audience was building and the Brit music press were fawning. The guitar-less trio sparked off a frenzied bidding war by the majors late last year.

The result? Island Universal snapped up the band. The wheels were set in motion.

The group’s first major label single proper, the majestic Somewhere Only We Know, made its debut at No.3 on the Brit singles charts. The second, an equally melodic Everybody’s Changing (different from the Fierce Panda version) also did brisk business in the charts, confirming the band’s status as the hottest new band in Britain.

If the hit singles were headline grabbing, then the band’s debut long player Hopes and Fears served notice that Keane were out to impress further. Walking the fine line between anthemic stadium rockers, sensitive balladry and overblown bombast, Keane’s music evokes the yearning melodies and atmospherics of Brit indie rock at its finest.

Think Travis, Radiohead and Coldplay with sweeter melodies and lush radio friendly production and you’ll be in the ballpark. Apart from the singles, Hopes and Fears manages to maintain the quality without going over old ground. After a only few a listens, memorable songs like This Is The Last Time, Sunshine, Bedshaped and We Might As Well be Strangers will seem like old friends.

While the band’s success may have seemed like it happened overnight to a lot of people, the fact of the matter is that Keane was the by-product of years of perseverance and hard graft.

“I think in a way that sort of makes it feel doubly satisfying because we sort of feel that we’ve put in the time and effort,” reckoned Keane’s affable drummer Richard Hughes over a crackly international connection recently.

Hughes was calling from Chicago where the band were supporting West-Coast outfit Rooney.

“We’ve been doing this for a long time and we’ve put everything that we had into it. So yeah, it’s incredibly satisfying to have an album out and be able to tour and have people show up because they want to hear your songs. It’s incredible.”

Many detractors feel Keane, with big budgets to work on, were a product of a massive major label onslaught.

Hughes argued: “We really didn’t think beyond the album and we certainly had no idea that it would take off so quickly. We didn’t expect anything because we have learnt not to expect things (laughs). We just try and do what we can and see what happens. Like I said before, we had played shows for a very long time and it’s been a long haul for us just to get the album out.”

The fact that Keane operates without a guitarist has probably hampered the band more than anything. Keane has been described as a “guilty pleasure” to a lot of indie rock fans in that they are not your typical cool rock ‘n’ roll outfit to fall in love with, a claim which Hughes strongly refutes. It hardly has the swagger of early Oasis or the common people edge that Pulp could boast.

“I don’t know if that is true actually. I’ve never had the impression that people are kind of ashamed to like us. Our opinion is that being rock ‘n’ roll is either made up or just for show with a lot of bands around today, “ sneered the drummer, sounding more animated than any point during the interview.

“I mean, we don’t go out and get wasted every night. I don’t even think that all the bands that say they do, necessarily do it that much. Do you know what I mean? We’re not ashamed about it; we’re just who we are. We don’t pretend to be anything but quite normal people. The whole rock ‘n’ roll thing is a load of rubbish and we are not ashamed to say that. People are either going to accept us for that or laugh at us for not being cool. I don’t get the impression that people particularly care about that with us. We’ll just have to wait and see. It’s not the 1970s anymore, no matter what The Darkness will have you believe.”

For the record, Keane used to have a guitarist when it first started out but he left the band in 2001.

“He just had enough. We weren’t making any progress and he decided to do something else,” recalled Hughes. Without a guitarist, the band then happened upon its sweet, melodic sound, arriving at its current set of instruments by “by default.”

Rice-Oxley, who was playing bass in the band at this point, decided that he wanted to concentrate on playing piano. At the same time, Chaplin stopped playing guitar because he felt that it was a barrier between him and the audience. From that point, everything just fell into place for these Sussex-raised lads. The tunes just kept flowing.

Asked to pick his favourite song on the album, Hughes opted for one of the songs that the band wrote quite late on entitled We Might As Well Be Strangers.

“That’s definitely one of my favourite songs on the album. It’s really raw and definitely one of the darkest moments on the album. It’s a real favourite and one that really goes down well live.”

At the end of the day, what Keane demands (from the music) is that it makes an emotional connection with the audience whether live or on record. For the band, that remains an absolute.

“The music and the songwriters that we love all strive to do that, to make music that one can relate to. Put it this way: the emotional connection is a major part of our music. We try to write honest songs. We always try to write from the heart and not hold anything back. The best thing that we can ever find out about our music is that people send us an email or come up to us at gigs and say ‘that song really means something’ or ‘that song really helped me out.’ That’s pretty much the biggest compliment you can get,” Hughes said.

Keane might not blaze format radio stations here despite its mass appeal and indie cred everywhere else. The fingers point at local radio programmers and their reluctance to inject more Brit quality on the airwaves.

But obviously, this is one promising Brit band that won’t be denied if the indie groundswell gets going.

Keane’s Hopes and Fears is now out on Universal Malaysia.