Redefining the Power Trio
Much has been made of Keane's guitarless stature, and, to be sure, swapping an electric six-string for an electric piano is a bold move for a band stomping in the footsteps of Britpop staples like Travis, Coldplay, and Starsailor. Mentioned less often is the fact that one of the band's three members, Tom Chaplin, just sings. This makes the trio a structural cousin of the Doors, who played all their shows without benefit of a bass guitarist. The liner notes for Keane's full-length debut, Hopes and Fears (available on CD, hybrid SACD, and limited-edition vinyl in the UK), credit Tim Rice-Oxley with both keyboards and bass, but the instrumental arrangements are decidedly keyboard-focused--unlike, say, those of Ben Folds' trio, whose bass guitar is essentially an equal voice--and Keane maintains its trio status on stage.
This means Chaplin's silky tenor carries greater weight in Keane than it might in a more guitar-oriented act. And that's just fine: Chaplin's sheer, high-octane power deserves to be heard, and this record will make sure it is. The band hails from Battle, England, but, to these ears, Chaplin sounds most like a mix of two Scotsmen, Travis's Fran Healy and the singer Horse from the band of the same name, evoking the passion and timbre of the former with the power and sweetness of the latter. Sure, there's any number of other singers I could invoke, notably Radiohead's Thom Yorke and Muse's Matthew Bellamy (though there's less Jeff Buckley in Chaplin than we hear in Bellamy) -- but making all these neat comparisons side-steps the fact that Chaplin, without a doubt, owns his cords, adorning his pitch-perfect belting with a poet's enunciation and traces of tastefully applied vibrato. And, not to be overlooked, the singer's exceptional taste and control extend to his reading of Keane's lyrics, which are uniformly of the sensitive-romantic variety, one man alone against the world (or at least his girlfriend).
Most songs are credited to the trio, though four list co-producer and keyboard programmer to the stars James Sanger as co-writer. But it's a good bet Chaplin produces the lion's share of the words. Whoever pens the lyrics has a refreshing knack for finding phrases that match the music's meter, giving Keane's songs a verbal fluidity too often absent in pop music (Alanis Morissette being the foremost offender in this department).
The album's 11 tracks clock in at a brief 45 minutes, making it ripe for re-spins. Apart from inverting the black-and-white cover art, the US edition omits "On a Day Like Today" from the version released two weeks earlier in the UK. In keeping with the Stateside tendency to front-load albums, the US edition also repositions the single "This is the Last Time" to track two. Both editions open with the band's lead single, however, the plaintive, soaring "Somewhere Only We Know", which cleverly employs a faux chorus ("Oh simple thing where have you gone?") to build tension leading into the song's true refrain, which also happens to serve as the bridge when we finally hear it ("And if you have a minute why don't we go / Talk about it somewhere only we know?").
By the time Chaplin, Rice-Oxley, and drummer David Hughes dive into the chorus of "This is the Last Time", it's clear we're locked into music of triumph from a band that understands the power of melody and musical dynamics. Chaplin has an unfortunate tendency to inhale his microphone as he's sucking in a lungful of air, but there are times, as in "This is the Last Time", where this could almost be mistaken for a technique to convey that extra degree of passion.
From there it's a pleasing round of sweeping crescendos and knowing key shifts, with delectable, can't-wait-for-the-next-chorus hooks packed into "Bend and Break", "Everybody's Changing", "Your Eyes Open", and the Outfieldish "We Might as Well be Strangers". Distinctively, the band all but dispenses with background vocals and makes zero reliance on double tracking to thicken Chaplin's voice: none is needed. Keane's sound is full enough as it stands, and its members want us to know it. For all their good songwriting, however, there's a sameness of tone and color and tempo to the album as a whole that takes some listening to get past. An acoustic piano would be a welcome touch.
"Sunshine" is the odd song out, sonically, featuring a sparer arrangement and more elaborate vocals--it may in fact be the only track to feature background vocals (supplied by Chaplin, who thankfully sees each song as something other than an opportunity to get Mercurial with overdubs). The closing "Bedshaped" offers greater dynamic swing than most of the songs, charged by refreshing blasts of synthesized low end on the refrains. What's intended by the lines "You'll follow me back / With the sun in your eyes / And on your own / Bedshaped and legs of stone"? Your guess is as good as mine.
While it's clear a lot of work went into layering the keyboard sounds (most successfully on "She Has No Time" and the dreamy "Untitled 1"), the CD's sound is astonishingly flat, lacking any real sense of stereophonic depth. That's partly the result of an intended "wall of sound," I suspect, but it's also the result of extreme dynamic compression employed in disc mastering to make the record as loud as possible at nearly every turn. Ironically, this technique crushes grandeur rather than inflating it. The album is soon to see release on high-resolution Super Audio CD, so there may yet be a way to hear some front-to-back layering and more natural sounding esses from Chaplin.
Hopes and Fears bodes very well for Keane. There are valid reasons to fear a retread on the band's sophomore release, but still more reasons to be hopeful that the next record will find the trio galloping further down its beautifully landscaped path toward a sound and a sensibility it can truly call its own.
— 10 December 2004
