Keane Perfect Symmetry Review
‘Spiraling’ and ‘The Lovers Are Wrong’ Spark New Wave Comeback
Nov 6, 2008
What happens when mopey British group Keane, best known for their piano meanderings about lost loves, mixes with the reigning king of disco production? Perfect Symmetry.
Co-produced by Stuart Price and Jon Brion, Perfect Symmetry has all the glean of a hit 80’s dance pop disc without sacrificing the melancholic lyrics and moodiness of piano-ballad gurus Keane –the result adds up to their best album to date and one of the best released this year.
The Lovers Are Wrong
Over shimmering keyboards and sleek, manicured production, Keane sings of various stages of love and relationships, and the state of the world. On the album’s first proper single “The Lovers are Wrong” singer Tom Chaplin opens the track by declaring “I dreamed I was drowning in the River Thymes/ I dreamed I had nothing at all/ nothing but my own skin”.
“The Lovers are Wrong” muses on love and its illusions “When we fall in love, we’re just falling in love with ourselves”, in a world where war and savagery seem to be winning out over romance and warm relations. While a track highly based on hope, its message leans subtly towards the dire – luckily the New Wave backing music sounds so peppy and bubbly the dread is soon forgotten.
Spiraling
Album opener, “Spiraling” sounds akin to Johnny Hates Jazz’s fashon of producing highly polished synth pop in the late 80’s while still sounding modern. Available as a free down in August, “Spiraling” shot to the upper regions of the UK charts upon proper release.
While upbeat and poppy, the track contains an underlining of dreadful disappointment at the outset of a life spoiled “Did you wanna be a winner/ did you wanna be an icon/ did you wanna be famous/ did you wanna be the President/ did you wanna start a war/ did you wanna have a family/ did you wanna be in love/” .
However, the track, chock full of bouncy beats and extra bleeps, keeps it afloat. Like many of the new songs on this album, Keane steer clear of slipping down the overly melodramatic depression highway taken on previous hits, and they have never sounded better.
Better Than This
“Better Than This” contains hand claps – could this be the same band that released the coming of age downer “Everybody Changes” but a few years ago? Heavier synths surround the opener to “You Haven’t Told Me Anything” before revealing a more bare bones Piano-voice track reminiscent of the band’s earlier work – however, with heaver production, it too fails to fall into the plodding category of their more melodramatic hits.
Keane in Perfect Symmetry
Listening to Perfect Symmetry quickly erases all memory of past Coldplay-inspired brooding voice-piano dabblings such as the brilliant but over-played “Somewhere Only We Know”, with the exception of the title track and “You Don’t See Me”. Luckily after the midsection pause, “Again & Again” brings back the happy times. “Playing Along” swoops in distant dreaming, 80’s revivalism and future musings – one of the prettier tunes on the album, Keane highlight acoustic guitars and slimmer production to balance the subtlety of the track.
Ending where it began, with a musing on romance, “Love is the End” allows the band to indulge in their piano –happy ways for a brief period, while “Time to Go” recalls Travis in better times (circa 1999’s The Man Who).
Perfect Symmetry highlights Keane’s strengths as a band on the rise to the peek of their pop career. The album shows enormous growth and a broadening of their musical boundaries. Clearly one of the best albums of 2008.
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