Keane as Mustard

At the moment, Keane are at a rather enviable juncture. It’s very early days for the melodic rockers but pianist Tim Rice-Oxley is thoroughly enjoying the trappings of his new-found semi-celebrity status.

“They’re probably getting worried now as it’s our day off,” he says of his label’s press office. “They’re probably feeling a bit guilty that they’re making us do interviews. Still, I’m happy to talk to anyone. I’ve had so many years of people not being at all interested in us, I’m just glad to have the chance to talk about our music.”
This particular strain of gung-ho optimism is not uncommon among bands who have recently scored a major label deal, but there is something about Rice-Oxley’s all-too-knowing philosophies that sets him apart from the new band herd.
“We’re just really happy to have been given the chance to do what we do, so we never turn down the opportunity to play our music anywhere,” he muses. “I hope we never fall into the trap that we think we’re some kind of celebrities. It’s amazing how quickly bands get very snobbish about what they will and won’t do. Suddenly they start thinking that they work incredibly hard. It’s probably because they hear other bands say it and they think that’s what you’re meant to say if you’re a musician. For us, we just love what we do. It would be stupid to start moaning about it.”
In spite of their whirlwind romance with the pop charts, Keane bear the hallmarks of a band who have had their fair share of struggle over the years. Having formed in 1996, the band played their first London gig in 1998, and several years of demo-touting and financial adversity ensued.
“It’s such a big part of who we are,” Rice-Oxley says of the band’s previous incarnation as Camden almost-rans. “I guess it has all sorts of peripheral benefits. Generally, it enables you to keep things in perspective and appreciate what you’ve got. Many bands don’t have the years of struggle that enables you to think like that.”
Having waited some years for a major label deal, several came along at once. Island Records finally emerged triumphant from the A&R scrum last year, and promptly set the band to work recording Hopes And Fears, the album that finally catapulted them into the public’s imagination.
“We just felt relieved when we got the deal,” says Rice-Oxley simply. “We were attempting our first tour of England, one we had put together ourselves, and while it was great fun, it wasn’t what you could call a success. Our manager called and said there was interest from this company and it was a case of ‘thank god’. It sounded for a change like it was going to happen, as opposed to being a load of chit chat. Then, more and more labels started getting interested in us. We decided to go with Island; we’d had enough of the A&R nonsense, we just wanted to get on and actually make a record as opposed to spending our days having meetings with A&R people and having fancy dinners.”
Unfortunately for Keane, the media have become somewhat obsessed with the notion that the band are some kind of ‘overnight’ success.
“I had one interviewer a few weeks ago,” he recalls, “and she was telling me how she was talking to Snow Patrol and they were saying how it took them years to get anywhere and then we just ‘turn up’ and score a hit single. Still, you can’t expect people to read the extended history of Keane. Most people know that it’s taken us a very long time.
“It’s one of the more annoying things about being in this band. It’s not that it’s inaccurate, but people perceive being an overnight success as being a bad thing – so it would be unfortunate to be tarred with that particular brush. We’re just glad to be here. Better late than never and all that…”
Another bugbear is the media insistence that the band are the new Coldplay or the new Travis. Still, the Coldplay comparisons are almost inescapable, given Keane’s penchant for heartfelt, piano-tinged balladry.
“We’re often perceived as being next in line to their throne” he concedes, “I don’t think we sound much like them, but I guess it’s hard for me to be objective. There’s plenty of our stuff that you wouldn’t find on either (Coldplay) album. We know the band and we’re friends with them, but I wouldn’t say they’re hugely influential. I hope that people will listen to our record and realise that we have a sound of our own, and if we’re influenced it’s by a range of people that you might not expect.”
When asked which comparison he would rather live with, Rice-Oxley is hesitant.
“I’m not hugely comfortable with either to be honest, but I would probably say I’m more comfortable with Travis. We see Coldplay as contemporaries; we started off at the same time as them, although it happened for them more quickly.”
So is celebrity on a Coldplay scale something that the band are striving towards?
“Fame isn’t something I would want desperately,” he deadpans. “It’s more Chris (Martin) than anyone else in the band who is famous. When you marry a star or a bigger star, the attention is doubled. I don’t know if we’ll ever have that attention. Maybe it’s unavoidable at some stage. I don’t think Chris has particularly courted it. The only thing you can do to survive that situation is to keep making consistently good music.”
Having scraped their way onto the New Bands stage at last year’s Carling festival, the band recently stormed the massive Other Stage at this year’s Glastonbury blow-out.
“Glastonbury was phenomenal,” recalls Rice-Oxley. “We had just been on tour in the US, so we literally flew in, did some interviews on site and went on stage. We didn’t have time to really worry about it. It was an amazing response, with about 30,000 people coming to see us.”
During their recent Stateside trip, the trio managed to rack up a classically rock’n’roll ‘near-death experience’ before their triumphant return to the Somerset valleys.
“It was much less exciting than it sounds,” admits Rice-Oxley. “We were driving through New Mexico towards Colorado, and it was the middle of the night and we had a tyre blow-out on the bus. I was asleep at the time and when I woke I thought we’d driven over a cliff. We had swerved all over the road, but the driver Steve managed to control the bus and stop it from crashing into anyone. The crew managed to sleep through it, amazingly.”
Feel free to insert your own ‘Rush Of Blood To The Head’ gag here, dear readers…

Keane play the Ulster Hall, Belfast (August 28) and the Olympia, Dublin (29)