I JUST NEED SOMEONE TO TELL ME HOW TALL I AM
Review: Variety
By Steven Mirkin
Keane/Minibar
June 6, 2004
Optimism gets top billing on Keane's debut album "Hopes and Fears" (Interscope). The
British trio's best songs feature surging, majestic choruses that raise you up like
high tide, while the lyrics provide an undertow of melancholy, mourning losses and
yearning for simpler times. It's a cocktail that's proved commercially intoxicating,
as Keane has become of the most unlikely success stories in English music this year:
a modest, guitarless trio specializing in mild, piano-based mid-tempo pop that's
topped the U.K. charts. Given the spirited response to their first headlining show
in L.A. Friday -- a sold out Troubadour crowd singing along even with b-sides
available only on small independent import releases -- they seem poised to repeat
their achievement Stateside.
If their 45-minute perf made Keane's appeal clear -- it's tough not to be pulled in
by the radio-friendly embrace of "Bend and Break" and "This Is the Last Time" -- it
also pointed up their weaknesses. Except for the single "Somewhere Only We Know,"
they have yet to craft a convincing ballad, and too many of the songs cover similar
emotional and melodic terrain.
Singer Tom Chaplin has an extraordinary, creamy tenor that can put even the blandest
material over, but after a while, the effect is like overindulging in white
chocolate.
The most obvious reference point is Jeff Buckley, although Chaplin lacks the
brooding restlessness that made Buckley so compelling, while shades of Queen's
Freddie Mercury and the Zombies' Colin Blunstone can also be heard. He cuts a
disarming figure onstage with his baby faced demeanor and guileless dancing, and he
seemed genuinely abashed by the aud's enthusiasm.
There's a summery freshness to Keane right now. Its moderate sound is something of a
palliative in this partisan time; whether music this monochromatic will retain its
appeal is anyone's guess.
Minibar took the stage immediately before Keane, and the L.A.-by-way-of-Britain
quartet packed more of a kick than in the past. With Simon Petty adding his arch
vocals and Tim Walker's plangent guitar solos, songs such as the rangy "Somebody
Down Here Loves You" (from last year's "Fly Below the Radar" on Foodchain Records)
sound like Robyn Hitchcock transplanted to Laurel Canyon.
Keane plays New York's Knitting Factory June 24.
From Variety
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