Keane aren't a band who like being pigeonholed – although that's got more to do with the combined mass of their giant moon-faces being unable to fit into standard pigeonholes than a need to constantly change musical direction.
But that doesn't mean that Keane can halt their spectacularly restless creative muse, though. Keane pride themselves on making each new album sound different to ones that came before it so – while Keane's first album was an experiment in painfully sensitive girlishness that only idiots like, and their second album was an experiment in slightly bleak girlishness that only idiots like – Keane have announced that their next album is going to sound like Dr Dre. Exactly like Dr Dre. They're even going to wear big gold chains and breakdance and black their faces up and pimp a bitch like all those rappers they saw on that wonderful arts documentary on BBC Four recently.
Don't look now, but 2008 looks set to be the year of joltingly sudden musical handbrake turns. Already Coldplay have announced their Hispanic album and now Keane have announced that their forthcoming third album is going to be a Dr Dre rip-off. What with Oasis planning to release an album of French Baroque harpsichord fantasias and Radiohead putting the finishing touches to Mr Sunshine's Jolly Ragtime Laffaganza, we're really going to be in for quite the year.
But this article isn't about everyone; this article is about Keane – the trio of sphere-headed tubsters from Sussex who managed to corner the market for soppy ballads sung like a girl back in 2004. Time has not been kind to Keane – during the recording of their second album Keane briefly split up after a dispute over the ownership of a scotch egg spiralled out of control, causing the drummer to use the word 'flipping' and then burst into tears for using such disgusting language. And then there was Keane's darkest hour – when singer Tom Chaplin simultaneously walked past a pub and looked at a picture of some cocaine in a magazine and decided that he'd better get to rehab as quickly as possible.
With these harrowing experiences behind them, Keane have decided that they don't want to replicate the recording of their second album in the slightest when they put together their forthcoming third album. Even if that means they're going to make a Dr Dre-style gangsta rap album with titles like Back To Waitrose Bitch (These Aren't Organically-Reared Sausages) and I Got 99 Problems And 98 Of Them Are About Gerald From The Local Residents' Association. Sort of. NME quotes Keane drummer Richard Hughes:
"We're going to try and do something different with the next one. There's a lot of interesting stuff coming out of America that's… I mean, I've been listening to people like Dr Dre for a long time, I think 2001's a ridiculously amazing record and its probably the most played thing on my iPod. I love the sparseness of that, and the last record was really dense, it was full of stuff. So maybe we'll try something that's as empty as possible. There's certainly elements of that that you could experiment with. You could try and be more minimal in your approach with instruments and try to get a bit more funk in there. We'll see!"
That's perfect, because we've long been under the assumption that the only thing worse than Keane would be White Funk Keane. However, even though we're almost one hundred percent convinced that the thing most played on Richard Hughes' iPod is actually Wired For Sound by Cliff Richard, part of us – the part that'd never admit it in public – is dying for Keane to go the whole hog and release a flat-out West Coast gangsta rap album. Of course Keane, being the sticklers for authenticity that they are, would need to join some sort of gang to get a sense of the underlying tension that informed Dr Dre's musical output. And our money is on Keane joining The Crips, because the blue of the gang's outfits are less likely to clash with all the broken veins in the goutish faces of the members of Keane than the red uniforms worn by The Bloods.
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Casey says
Hey, now. Cliff Richard is way cooler than Keane. He’s at least got stones enough to sing about Devil Women. Keane have not hit puberty yet.