Beyond compare

Forget the Coldplay comparisons. With the release and associated tour for their most recent album, Perfect Symmetry, English rock trio Keane have broken free from any lingering associations to that other slightly depressed piano-loving band from London. Moving ahead from the keyboard-led rock of Keane's two previous albums, Perfect Symmetry is uptempo, synth-heavy and calls on 80s funk a lot more than fans of classic singles Everybody's Changing and Somewhere Only We Know would ever imagine. 'I think the musical inspiration was always there,' muses drummer Richard Hughes. 'It's not a deliberate move away from the piano, more a move towards different things.' Keane have a co-producer credit on the album, which also features guitars for the first time in the band's history. 'We had lots of fun experiments; for me, more drum sounds, percussion, backing vocals,' Hughes says. '[Vocalist] Tom sang in all kind of different voices, whereas in the past, he's definitely just stepped up to the mike and sung with his incredible voice. This time, he was trying not to do the default Tom Chaplin thing.' Where pianist/arranger/composer Tim Rice-Oxley led the direction of the band's explosive debut in 2004, Hopes and Fears, and their follow-up Under the Iron Sea, the new direction of Perfect Symmetry means keyboards took a bit of a back seat. 'No disrespect to the piano though,' says Hughes solemnly. 'Never!' Just about the only piano-led track on the album is the title track, which Hughes names as 'probably the best song we've ever recorded'. 'I think we just had the chance to write songs that have turned out to mean something to people,' he says. 'Perfect Symmetry resonated with people because the message is, like, you get back what you give, so why not do something positive instead?' Regardless of whether you find that sort of stream of consciousness off-putting or enlightening, Keane have won more fans than critics with this album, with most reviewers lauding the trio's new sound despite a smaller percentage actually rating the album. A notable exception was Rolling Stone magazine, which dismissed the Perfect Symmetry track as a 'mushy and melancholic... musing on life'. 'I don't actually read that many reviews and things. The ones we tend to point out to each other are the ones where they describe how good or bad looking we are,' Hughes says. 'Oh, and all the ones where they get our names wrong. We still call Tom 'Tim Chaplin' after some review years ago.' Reviewers after all, are not the bread and butter for mainstream success stories such as Keane, and Hopes and Fears made its debut at No 1 on the British albums chart upon its release in May 2004. The band picked up two prizes at the 2005 Brit Awards - best album and best breakthrough act. Rice-Oxley was also named songwriter of the year at the Ivor Novello awards. 'I think people like melody. Tim writes amazing melodies, and words that mean something to people,' Hughes says. 'Of our three albums, Perfect Symmetry is the kind of record that looks out most at the world around us. I don't know if it's just that we're a bit older, but we're definitely thinking more about the world around us.' The band may no longer draw comparisons to Coldplay, but the parallels, as Hughes says, are strange. Rice-Oxley, Chaplin and Hughes had been friends since childhood, all three ended up at the same boarding school, before Rice-Oxley attended University College London, the same university as Coldplay's Chris Martin. The two bands hung out in the same circles, and Martin asked Rice-Oxley to play the keyboards for a just-formed Coldplay when he heard him play during a weekend in the Surrey countryside. Rice-Oxley turned him down however, for his own fledgling outfit, then known as the Lotus Eaters. 'We were friends, and I'd probably say we still are,' Hughes says. 'One of the things that gave us hope in the beginning was that someone we knew had managed to release an album properly. You can't underestimate how big a deal that is. As a struggling band, you think it's impossible to get your chance.' That came in December 2002, when one of Keane's gigs was attended by Simon Williams, the same man who 'discovered' Coldplay. He offered to release the band's first single, Everybody's Changing, and the resulting attention led to the band signing to major label Island Records the next summer. A few months later, Keane was named by the BBC as the band most likely to achieve success. It may not have been the most rock 'n' roll of endorsements, but how long has it been since rock was actually about revolution and its accompanying rebellious hair? 'The myth of rock 'n' roll is completely ridiculous,' says Hughes. 'The other week in Canada, we got to this dressing room, and it was like, wow, it's just been painted, it was really smart. Turns out that the previous person had smashed up the room and the management had been working all day to fix it. It's so ridiculous that someone trashed the place because they thought, oh, I'm really f*****g cool.' 'Do we have fun? Yes. We hang out with friends, have a great time on the road ... This weird myth of rock 'n' roll is largely made up by people who don't have anything to say.' Keane play Hong Kong next Tuesday as part of a world tour supporting Perfect Symmetry. 'I do keep in the world of the smaller gig, but with Keane these are always tied in to a radio or TV station,' says Hughes. 'Still cool, though. The week our [last] record came out, we were playing at tiny clubs we hadn't played at for five years. Those gigs are as much fun as huge ones, and more nerve-racking.' They may be about as big as Coldplay, but that's where it stops. 'All we get now is that people tend to ask this oblique question about how we feel about 'the comparison'. So it's like, what comparison?' says Hughes. 'We're from the same country, same city. We're quite tall as well. Actually, we're way taller.' Keane - Perfect Symmetry Tour, Tue, 8pm, Hitec, 1 Trademart Drive, Kowloon Bay, HK$380, HK$580, HK Ticketing. Inquiries: 2629 6240