I'll happily admit if I turn out to have been wrong-- and only time will tell-- but Keane sound like they'll be the last in a long line of British bands who've grown tired of miming Radiohead and now simply aim for the much more imitable sound of Coldplay. I say "last" because Keane's debut album, Hopes and Fears, is so miserably and calculatedly maudlin that it almost seems capable of killing the trend started by Travis and passed like a relay baton to Starsailor and, eventually, Snow Patrol. Coldplaya-hatas will loathe Keane; most others will just be insulted. Inexplicably, the band was recently shortlisted for the Mercury Prize.
Keane consists of three well-meaning guys from East Sussex: drummer Richard Hughes, pianist Tim Oxley-Rice, and singer Tom Chaplin. With this limited instrumental setup, Keane ought to sound like either some bizarro-world version of Ben Folds Five or that pick-up band that played your cousin's wedding. Whether those options would be better than what they actually sound like is up for debate.
Oxley-Rice does attempt to salvage the wreck by channeling U2 circa-"New Year's Day". His piano forms the main melodies, and combines with Hughes' drumwork to form a technically competent rhythm section. The almost minimalist approach of these two could potentially have served as the foundation for a mildly compelling-- or at least passable-- album, one closer in spirit to the chilled-out ambience of this album's only not-horrible track, "Untitled 1". The problem is Chaplin, who sings as though he's trying to talk you down from a ledge (and failing), belting out tunes with all the bombastic earnestness of James Walsh and Fran Healy combined, but no sense of subtlety or melody.
Every song on Hopes and Fears soars, as if winging a gossamer wind to scale the heights of heaven and touch the cloudy hand of God. Across the span of 11 tracks, there are maybe 13 triumph-of-the-human-spirit choruses, each trying to out-uplift the previous. "Bend and Break" is particularly egregious: "If only I don't bend and break," Chaplin wails as the chorus swells to bursting, "I'll meet you on the other side/ I'll meet you in the light."
Silly as the lyrics are, they might have more impact if every other song on Hopes and Fears didn't work the same melodramatic, soft-verse/loud-chorus template with the predictability of a bad xFC-metal band (or if Chaplin didn't repeat more or less the same sentiment each time). Writing such dramatic melodies undeniably takes talent, but putting so many of them back to back takes not only a penchant for repetitious banality, but a particularly rampant egotism: Not since All That You Can't Leave Behind has a band tried quite so hard to change your life.
It's strange, then, that Chaplin puts his own life squarely at the center of these songs-- both vocally and lyrically-- rarely affording consideration to anyone else, even his bandmates. There are other people in these songs, but like Hughes and Oxley-Rice, they're only present as a framework for his projectile vocals, and to reflect his morally superior intentions or ideas about friendship, music and love. In addition to nebulous notions of life and love and hazy references to "change" and "the light," Chaplin peppers his songs with vague pronouns-- she, you, and it-- but I predominates. And when he's not condescending ("I don't know you and I don't want you till the moment your eyes open"), he's engaging in a kind of self-centered therapy ("Everybody's changing and I don't feel the same") that wears increasingly thin from the moment Hopes and Fears begins.
That line from "Everybody's Changing" is telling: For all their elitist pomposity, Keane are just bandwagon-jumpers, without an original thought-- or even a trace of charisma-- to save their rep. My hope is that they'll fade unceremoniously into obscurity; my fear is that they'll breed still more Coldplay knockoffs, eventually saturating Stateside department store P.A.s with all their bloodless sobbing. On some level, I'm optimistic that Keane's eighth-wave mimicry could signal the end of this particular brand of copycatting; on another, I know that it simply points to a future in which upstart British bands aim to sound just like Franz Ferdinand instead.
