Sung to a “fearful child” lying beside the singer, opening track “You Are Young” rings with both time-honored “New Year’s Day” piano and you-and-me-against-the-world bravado. So, for Strangeland, we return to the proven misty Mountaintop. On those last two records, the original trio expanded into a far more flexible four-piece - and the resulting sound didn’t sell nearly as well.
On their subsequent records, Keane has added effects pedals that made their trademark pianos ring like guitars (2006’s Under the Iron Sea) cracking snares that recall David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance,” synths that echo Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes,” and actual Bowie-esque guitars (2008’s Perfect Symmetry) and vocals from personable, internationally travelled rappers K’naan (Somalia, Canada) and Tigarah (Tokyo, Brazil) on 2010’s Night Train. No band can avoid messing with a sound so quintessential. “Somewhere” has all that and Mountaintop-perfect lyrics: “I came across a fallen tree / I felt the branches of it looking at me…This could be the end of everything.” You can practically hear the tears crawl down frontman Tom Chaplin’s cheeks, staining his Burberry tartan.
The latter conjures corn-covered flatlands, greasy spoons tended by waitresses in anachronistic beehives, and various other touchstones of places Talking Heads had in mind when David Byrne declared, “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me to.” The European version features manly warbling that only happens in recording studios or remote nature settings, reverberating drums that imply echoing canyon walls, pea-soup basslines thick enough to require rubber boots, and studio gizmos spewing sonic mist everywhere. Keane’s biggest hit, “Somewhere Only We Know,” fills every qualification for Mountaintop Rock, a.k.a., the Euro equivalent of America’s Heartland Rock. Unlike so much 21st century Brit rock, that debut even went platinum in America, and now ranks as one of the world’s best-selling albums of the last 10 years. Keane are one of those groups based entirely on a single riff from a better song in a better band’s catalog - in this case, the piano part from U2’s “New Year’s Day.” When the Keane’s Hopes and Fears (better title: The Bono Variations) surfaced in 2004 - a year in which Coldplay released no recorded music - the masses hungry for contemporary yet comforting AOR gobbled it up.
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