KEANE: No reservates, no improvisation, no mistakes, no passion. |
Keane immediately brings to mind the “I like her/she likes him/I’m so lonely/oh, you’re hot/why don’t you like me?!” pop music genre from whence they came. But with the release of their latest album Under the Iron Sea, they’ve assured audiences -- and specifically those attending their in-store performance at First Act Guitar Studio on Saturday -- that they have ideas on warfare and wealth distribution. They just seem a bit confused as to what those ideas are.Keane struts onto the small stage like pros, and after a brief “hu-llo” from front man Tom Chaplin, promptly pound out an acoustic version of their latest single, “Is It Any Wonder.” What blank space the absence of guitar and drums create was immediately filled by Chaplin’s wholesome, Freddy Mercury-esque vocals. Yet the band performed with the over-rehearsed passion and intensity of a presidential state of the union address; it felt as though something larger went missing, that what was actually at stake had gotten lost, if it was ever even there to begin with.
Chaplin’s awkward grace works well in the context of wailing self-conscious lines like “Sometimes/It's hard to know where I stand/It's hard to know where I am/Well maybe it's a puzzle I don't understand.” If not sincere, the lyrics at least sound cute in tandem with Chaplin’s endearingly clumsy hand gestures as he searches passionately -- albeit in vain -- to figure out what to do with his hands in the absence of instrument. Meanwhile, the song struts forth with confidence -- no reservations, no improvisation, no mistakes -- even if the cost of such brazen confidence is the passion of the songs themselves.
Following the performance of their latest single, a brief onstage interview with Chaplin revealed, much to my shock, that the song is actually infused with deep political concerns, namely those which most affect British and American youths in the wake of the war in Iraq. But if the general feeling among the “confused youths” of the West is “After all the misery made/Is it any wonder that I feel afraid/Is it any wonder that I feel betrayed,” one has to wonder if Chaplin is giving our young, confused generation a little too much credit. Since when did confusion of self become confused with high-minded political, social, or global concerns?
In his rambling thoughts and ponderings, Chaplin comes across as though he’s asking the audience to tell him what he means. After the brief interview, the band immediately pounded out “Somewhere Only We Know,” their most recognizable hit in the States. That Chaplin avoids placing the same high-minded political agenda behind a song of much the same lyrical and musical content of “Is It Any Wonder,” doesn’t change the fact that the lyrics wouldn’t be out-of-place in any high schooler’s Deep Thoughts notebook. Keane rings the triumphant bell of each song but it continually dimples and then fails -- it summons nothing. In the absence of meaning, all that’s left for the twenty-or-so audience members is something closer to inarticulation. Passion, to be registered as such, cannot be this easy.
