= HAPPINESSWHERE: Sea Fog Studios, Polegate, East Sussex
PRODUCERS: Dan Grech
TITLE: TBC
SONG TITLES: Silenced By The Night, Sovereign Light Café, Day Will Come, Watch How You Go, Disconnected, You Are Young
DUE: May
The landlord of the Yew Tree Pub in Polegate, East Sussex is quite the Keane fan – and not just because the local four-piece have fed vast quantities of loose change into his jukebox. When songwriter-in-chief Tim Rice-Oxley recently built his Sea Fog studios on a nearby country lane, an unwanted piano and old guitar were donated to The Yew Tree’s bar. Since then, afterwork drinks for the band – Rice-Oxley, plus teetotal singer Tom Chaplin, drummer Richard Hughes and newly-installed bassist Jesse Quin – have regularly turned into lock-ins and late-night sing-alongs. Given tales of pub-based jollity like these, it’s not hard to work out why four years have passed since the release of Keane’s last studio album, the experimental, synth-spiked Perfect Symmetry.
Inside Sea Fog, the mood is just as convivial as any village boozer. Q’s arrival coincides with the end of a prolific writing streak which began during 2010; all four band members buzz with an “end of term vibe” which is unsurprising given that a staggering 100 song ideas – written by Rice-Oxley while the band toured their number 1 EP, Night Train 18 months ago – were whittled down to 40 demos in his home studio. Today, with that number cut even further, the album is tantalisingly close to completion and over lunch in Sea Fog’s kitchen, a feeling of job satisfaction is in evidence. Chaplin tucks into a plate of risotto and talks of playing golf with cricket legend Bob Willis (“He swears a lot on the course”). Rice-Oxley, Hughes and Quin join him at the table to discuss the tying of several loose ends: 19 songs are in the bag; only the final cut has yet to be settled. “Writing the album took longer than we had hoped,” says Rice-Oxley. “But we set ourselves a target of not starting until we knew we had something magical. There was a conscious effort to not do anything until the songs were really really strong.”
Songwriting muscle is something Keane have flexed with consistency since first breaking ground with 2004’s Hopes And Fears – a raft of emotive, piano ballads perfectly suited to mass festival sing-alongs and soundtracking weepily reflective moments in E4 teen dramas. The album went to Number 1 and scooped the Best Album award at the Brits. This trick was later repeated with 2006’s Under The Iron Sea and Perfect Symmetry in 2008 – both of which topped the charts – not that their high-billing status sated any personal ambition within Rice-Oxley. “I was reading a book about The Beatles” he says. “Before the recording of Penny Lane, Paul McCartney was in the studio all night doing his bass part. It sounded so effortless to me before I’d heard that. I always thought, The bastard, he probably fucking did it in one take. But it turned out even he had to work hard. I realised the reason I wasn’t writing something as good as Sgt.Pepper was because I wasn’t working enough, so I decided to try harder.”
This determined work ethic was twinned with a desire to return to the core spirit of Keane’s earlier material. In demos, Rice-Oxley updated the sidewinding piano chords and emotive lyricism that had fallen by the wayside during the recording of Perfect Symmetry. “I dunno,” notes the songwriter, “something didn’t click with Perfect Symmetry. I wish we’d been harder on ourselves in terms of the basic songs.”
“There was a real warmth to Hopes And Fears,” says Chaplin. “It’s what a lot of people identified with. When I like Tim’s writing the most, it’s when he captures a sense of feeling that I couldn’t put my finger on, but it resonates strongly. It’s really hard to do without sounding cheesy.”
Judging by the tracks played to Q at Sea Fog, this revisited lyrical seam has paid dividends, notably on the uplifting, piano-lead rush of Silenced By The Night, which marks a return to the emotional charge of their earlier work. Elsewhere, the stripped back Watch How You Go most resembles The Beatles with it’s shuffling drums and gentle harmonies; Sovereign Light Café’s vivid lyrics are imbibed with a romantic, end-of-the-pier spirit and features homespun tales of drunks and lovers. “It’s about a place we used to go in [nearby] Bexhill,” says Rice-Oxley. “There’s a lot of hope on this album. Sovereign Light Café is about going back to the start, a time when we were talking about all the great stuff we were going to do with our lives.”
As lunch is cleared away, the band turn to their plans for the album’s release in May. The diary for the coming year is being filled with tour dates and festival shows, though there are no moves to repeat their 2011 gig at the Great Wall of China. “There were some pretty angry Chinese guys who had to carry an upright piano up the wall,” laughs Quin.
“I really hope the album sneaks up on people,” says Chaplin. “I think people do expect great things of us and we’ve been away for a while. There was a sense that we should play to our absolute strengths on this album. It’s our most honest record.”
KEANE’S ALBUM DNA
5% NOSTALGIA-TINGED SEASIDE TALES
30% DRIVE-TIME ANTHEMS
10% PUB LOCK-INS
25% EVERYMAN EMOTION
25% BACK-TO BASICS PIANO CHORDS
5% BEATLES BIOGRAPHIES
(via peenissexual)
