Keane

[TheBig3]

Sorry for doing a non-standard thread starter here but I'd love to hear from our British friends about their thoughts on Keane.

Everyone else is welcome to provide their thoughts as well, it's an open forum, but please let me know where you're writing in from. I'm very much interested in the perception of certain bands in their home country.

I'm happy to provide more detail if you're interested, but I'd love to get a few responses first.

[jimmy jazz]

What a blast from the past.

My thoughts, based on their singles is that they were a pretty average, post-Britpop band in an era of average, post-Britpop bands like Kaiser Chiefs, Kasabian, Travis, Snow Patrol, bands like that.

Not my thing obviously.

Very early to mid noughties.

No offence if you like them.

[Saulaac]

Funny, I was thinking a couple of days ago about Keane for one of my favourite songs of all time, either "Everybody's Changing" or "Somewhere Only We Know". As jimmy says, they were similar to Kaiser Chiefs, Kasabian, Travis, Snow Patrol (Franz Ferdinand was another one). They often used piano with guitar which sounded good. And iirc they did, or could, easily headline Glastonbury.

If they were on the radio as I was driving on the M6 or M3 or whatever, I could easily think back to Inspiral Carpets, Happy Mondays, The Charlatans, The Clash...

[jimmy jazz]

Franz Ferdinand, forgot them. Knew there were more.

As said this sort of music was everywhere in the mid 00s.

[TheBig3]

It's funny, I don't think of a lot of those bands as being in the same caliber, then again this is the first time I've heard the phrase "Post Britpop" so what do I know?

I ask largely because I listen to an absolutely amazing college radio station near me and they will occasionally play Sovereign Light Cafe, and I wondered if this was one of those things where in the US they had 3 singles but in the UK they were massive.

Further, they're listed as Rock (which in the Britpop sense, OK, I get it) but the three songs I know seem very pop to me. Not a bad thing, I just didn't know how they'd become a rock band (same thing with Coldplay). This all makes a lot more sense. I was just wondering what the other side of the pond thought of them.

[jimmy jazz]

I wasn't aware of the song you just mentioned, I don't really hear of them now.

Their debut album was everywhere at the time though.

This quote about bands on the Wikipedia page for post-Britpop sums up how I feel about Keane and that sort of music in general:

They have also been criticised for providing a "homogenised and conformist" version of Britpop that serves as music for TV soundtracks, shopping malls, bars and nightclubs.

Not so much the nightclub bit but shopping, TV adverts etc.

Are you a Keane fan?

[jimmy jazz]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Enough_Education_to_Perform

This is probably my favourite album of that kind of stuff. Not a classic by any means I just like the singles.

[Guybrush]

The only song I remember by them (and I always forget the title) is Bedshaped.

It hasn't been in my rotation or anything, but I do like it and consider it a step above most pop songs. Added plus for the stop motion animation in the music video!

[TheBig3]

Are you a Keane fan?

I'm a fan of the three singles I know. I heard them again for the first time maybe last year on that station I mentioned, and I thought, "have they been killing it overseas all this time?"

I do think they sound like music for a RomCom which is fun y because I say that about a lot of post-grunge bands, too. Gruge and Britpop seem opposed to one another but they have a lot of weird similarities.

I tend to think of them as CVS music, songs I heat at thr Pharmacy at odd hours. Like Lifehouse, The Calling, or Lewis Capaldi (no idea why anyone likes that guy?)

It's all sort of overdramatic, songs for a breakup or reuniting. But for an odd reason I can't put my finger on the melody in Sovereign Light Cafe is infectious.

[Lexi Darling]

"Somewhere Only We Know" was a huge hit over here, not sure if I know any others by them.

I think a lot of the kind of music described in this thread falls into the category of "enjoy it when it happens to come on the radio but never listen to on my own time" for me.

And seconded on Lewis Capaldi. His voice and music have such a kind of forced melodrama to them that irritates the hell out of me.