Origins of Symmetry

One of the most quietly successful rock bands of the noughties are English trio Keane. The group’s epic, piano-led anthems were showcased to remarkable effect on their 2004 debut album, Hopes And Fears, which spawned several hit singles (including the mighty ‘Everybody’s Changing’) and sold over five million copies worldwide. In 2006, Keane consolidated the success of Hopes And Fears with a well-received follow-up, Under The Iron Sea, although there was to be a dark interlude just a few months after its release, when singer Tom Chaplin entered rehab in London to receive treatment for alcohol and drug abuse problems.

Having regrouped, Keane entered the studio earlier this year to begin work on their third album, Perfect Symmetry, which is released this month. Featuring a noticeably more electronic feel than the group’s previous work, it was produced by the band themselves along with noted groove technician Stuart Price (who has recorded as Les Rhythmes Digitales and Jacques Lu Cont), and US maverick Jon Brion, who – in addition to working with artists as diverse as Robyn Hitchock and Kanye West – is renowned for scoring several of cult director Paul Thomas Anderson’s films.
Being a huge PT Anderson fan myself, I can’t help but wonder if Keane were tempted to ask Brion to arrange an introduction to the filmmaker.
“No, although There Will Be Blood is my absolute favourite film of last year,” Tom Chaplin enthuses. “It’s genius. The thing about Jon is that he’s worked with so many brilliant people that you could sit there all day and ask him to introduce you to them. He’s a great guy.”
Was there a particular record Brion produced that made Keane want to work with him?
“Well, he’s worked with Kanye a lot, and he also co-produced the first Rufus Wainwright album. The other thing is his all-round musical genius; you only have to look at the little gig he does every Friday on YouTube to see it. It’s absolutely insane, his all-round musical ability. Just having a presence like that in the studio was a force for good; it really was very inspiring. He came along quite early in the process, and said to us, ‘Just remember to enjoy yourselves, and not to take it too seriously.’
“He picked out a couple of old Bowie records, and although they’re very serious, he encouraged us to listen to how much fun Bowie and the musicians were having. He wanted us to bring that into what we do. So, we had this sense of just enjoying ourselves, and I think that contributed massively to that idea of trying anything, however daft it seemed.”
Keane actually decamped to Berlin to work on Perfect Symmetry. Did their admiration of Bowie influence the move?
“I’m sure that’s part of it,” acknowledges Tom. “You want to jump on the incredible history and heritage that Berlin has musically. Artistically, you got the sense of it being this incredibly flamboyant city in the ’20s and ’30s. Then obviously there’s the knowledge that it was flattened in the Second World War. But then it sprung up from that, and it’s grown into this incredibly bold, modern, beautiful and iconic city.
“I suppose that resonated with us; we needed somewhere that was fresh and new. Somewhere that would contribute, in however conscious or subconscious a way, to what we were doing. Berlin just seemed the right place to do that, and I think it paid off.”
There even seems to be a slight Kraftwerk vibe to some of the record.
“It probably is subconscious,” muses Tom. “We’re big Kraftwerk fans. It just seeps into what you’re doing. In no way was this a calculated record; it felt very natural to make. We didn’t think, ‘Let’s make this bit sound like Bowie or Kraftwerk.’ Those elements did creep in, but they did so in a fairly original way, even though it sounds like a paradox. Those things infiltrated what we were doing, but at the same time, we felt we’d given them a fresh twist.”
How would Tom describe the overall lyrical tone of Perfect Symmetry?
“It’s a more open record,” he suggests. “The first two were probably a bit more introspective, and a bit more cryptic for the person looking in, though obviously not so much for ourselves. They were records about the particular points in our lives we were at. This one is more outward looking; it tries to see the world and the state of the nation as it stands right now.
“‘Better Than This’ I guess is a song about celebrity culture and the craziness of why people want to prostitute themselves for fame, without any real sense of achievement. It’s a polite request for people to try and do something substantial with their lives, as opposed to appearing on Big Brother.
“But it’s a very human album; it explores the competition between the incredible ability for good, and the equally incredible ability for being complete fucking idiots (laughs). We feel that about ourselves, and we feel the same about the world we’re looking out on. It’s record about a human condition in that respect.”
Did the personal problems Chaplin experienced in 2006 influence the writing of the record in any way?
“It kind of feels left behind,” he responds. “There are a couple of songs that probably relate to that period in time. If they’d appeared on Under The Iron Sea, they’d have had much more finger-pointing, and been much more wholly negative and critical. I suppose ‘Love Is The End’ and ‘You Haven’t Told Me Anything’ are the two examples, but they try and see those times in a more sympathetic way. Certainly, my experiences were complicated, and they weren’t just related to one particular thing. It was a whole mass of weird frailties, and lack of communication, and just general weird behaviour.
“But the fact that we try to put those things in a sympathetic light is probably indicative of where we are now. We’ve moved on, and for the most part, this is very much an album about other things.”
So you weren’t tempted to do a full-on, Nine Inch Nails-style exorcising of demons?
“(Laughs). No, I think we’ve kind of had that catharsis now; we feel it’s out of our system. One way in which it was sort of articulated was in the sense of almost reckless abandon we had towards making the album. I think we sailed so close to the edge that it was just like, well, everything is so easily lost that you might as well just enjoy what you’re doing while you’ve got it. So we had that approach to making this album, and I think that’s why it sounds like a band having more fun, and being less earnest and serious.”
The summer of 2006 saw Keane perform at the Live Earth concert in London. What did Tom make of the experience?
“I felt a little bit underwhelmed by it, if I’m being perfectly honest,” he admits. “It’s a great cause, and it was done with the best of intentions, but I felt that the media had this attitude of just wanting to see the negative side of it, ie. ‘How can you rock stars be standing here preaching to us when you fly around the world?’ The main agenda was, ‘Aren’t you all hypocrites?’, which I felt was not a good way of going about it. Everybody’s a hypocrite, I don’t think anyone denies that. Certainly in the Western world, we’re all contributing in our own way to global warming and environmental issues.
“So the idea of the day wasn’t to try and make everyone change everything that they were doing, it was to put pressure on governments and create a sense of change. And unfortunately I don’t think it achieved that in any way, shape or form. It went largely ignored, which is a bit of a shame. It’s classic human nature; we’re such incredible self-saboteurs. We have an opportunity to put on this great thing to try and change the way the Western world approaches its fuel consumption, etc, etc. And yet, all we want to do is talk about the hypocrisy of it, but it doesn’t end up achieving anything.
“I still believe in those things, and I still hope there will be change. But there certainly won’t be change while we still have that attitude. I suppose the upshot is that I felt a little disappointed.”
Going back to Keane’s second album, Under The Iron Sea, it’s interesting to note that the video for the single ‘Atlantic’ was directed by Trainspotting author Irvine Welsh.
“He’s a big fan of Keane, weirdly enough,” explains Tom. “It’s funny, we seem to have a lot of strange fans of the band. A lot of hip-hop artists in America are big fans of Keane, and the guy who wrote American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis, is also a massive fan. Every now and then these strange figures pop up and express their love for our music, and it’s always nice when people have the courage to say so! Irvine Welsh came to us, and he was trying to spread his ideas into filmmaking.
“We had this song ‘Atlantic’, which was never going to be a proper single off the record, but we thought it would be nice to release as a sort of pre-download thing. And he said he’d love to make a video for us. He made an incredibly dark video (laughs). It was about this kind of Jesus figure emerging from the sea and being abused by various children throwing stuff at him. It was all quite dark and classic Irvine Welsh. But it was a great honour that he wanted to be involved in the album – we jumped at the chance. It was another of the lovely surprises that being in a band throws up now and then.”

Perfect Symmetry is released on Universal on October 13. Keane play the Odyssey Arena, Belfast (January 23) and the O2, Dublin (25)