The Art of Longevity Episode 67: Keane

Of all the bands to grace our company on The Art of Longevity, Keane have ridden the music industry rollercoaster through all the stations of the cross: struggle, success, excess, disintegration and if you’re lucky - enlightenment. Tim Rice-Oxley doesn't hesitate for a moment:“Yeah, absolutely. Our struggle was quite long and our disintegration was quite quick, although we clung on effectively for quite a while. I feel like now we are in a more positive and exciting place than the day before Hopes & Fears came out”.
It’s easy to forget in these days when the monoculture is a dot in the rear view mirror, that Keane really went huge: five consecutive number one UK albums (album six ‘Cause & Effect’ was number two). Their early success carried an unstoppable momentum. Yet behind the sheen of that success, as quickly as their second album ‘Under The Iron Sea’, the band was imploding - a combination of exhaustion and the pressure of heightened expectations causing an emotional disconnection between bandmates - a difficult thing to handle for old school friends.
Every band of longevity should make a book and/or a film. It’s what fans in today’s crowded music landscape deserve really - the scarcity of access to the inner circle, whether that’s present or past. And for Keane themselves it sounds like the book has served a therapeutic purpose in a way.
“We’re insanely hard on ourselves, to the point where it’s not good. We’d find any feedback and take it as a stick to beat ourselves up with. But we’re finally at a point now where we can say that we are quite good at what we do, proud of our music and our place in the world”.
As Keane heads back into the studio next year, the band is far better equipped than when they headed to Sanger’s French farmhouse 20 years ago to make their debut - both emotionally and technically. The only problem is that they have set the bar high when it comes to track record. The creative ambition and self-critical muscles of this band are no doubt twitching away.
“I know I’m going to have to write a lot of songs to get to the magic. One of the things bands struggle with is quality control - knowing the difference between what’s good and what’s great. There are millions of people out there trying to write songs as well so you have to raise your voice about everything else out there”.
On page 35 of the book Hopes & Fears: Lyrics and History are two lists on the page of a ring bound notepad, titled The OK Computer Test.

“There’s no way we thought we were making the next OK Computer but you’ve got to try. You ask yourself “how do our heroes do it”. But if we knew then what we know now, we might have put ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ at number five instead of first”.

For the next Keane record I suggest they apply “The Hopes and Fears Test”, just to make sure their new material is up to scratch.

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