It’s easy to shrug at Keane. They’ve been described as second-rate Coldplay, thanks mostly to their broad piano-inflected “rock songs that feel” mantra. I gave the band a pass on their first two LPs; there were some catchy tracks scattered about them (sometimes of the guilty variety) and the slip-ups weren’t all that glaring. But on their third go-around, they must be held accountable for any repeat offenses. What surprised me the most about Perfect Symmetry is that they’ve expanded their sound to include references to almost any big name in the huge sound mainstream pop riot of the 80s. What disappointed me the most was how feebly they incorporated those tricks into their heartfelt piano rock opus. Instead of improving on their early mediocre efforts, they’ve become even less interesting and undoubtedly less defensible.
Keane is built upon two foundations: the busy arena-size piano-and-keyboard framing courtesy of Tim Oxley-Rice and Tom Chaplin’s over-stressed vocalizing. The musicians have never found a melody too overwrought and Chaplin has never sung a word that didn’t demand unblinking sincerity. They’ve gotten away with lyrical blunders in the past because their style doesn’t demand introspection and observant truth. But as they pile on the beautiful noise on Perfect Symmetry, there has to be something there or else it’s all much ado about nothing. This time, they miss the mark and miff the tunes.
Leadoff and first single, “Spiralling,” is less Coldplay than Duran Duran, complete with soaring synth arcs and big jacket whooping. It’s a surprisingly spirited track, with reeling rhythms and keen instrumentation—an ambitious change of pace for the band, and one that is promising if not wholly successful. Awkwardly moving between faintly generic verse and blaring chorus, the song’s unforgivable misstep is its attention-seeking “charismatic preacher speech” bridge, something that hasn’t been interesting since Talking Heads pulled it off just right in 1980. “Did you wanna be a winner?/Did you wanna be an icon?” “Famous?” “President?” Start a war, have a family, be in love? Lyrical bankruptcy like this can’t be afforded by a band founded on sensitively lustrous massiveness.
Other outsized synthetic pop tracks follow. “Better Than This” is as tacky as anything else, finding Keane desperately plugging every corner with underwhelming Bunnymen dramatics and tweaking the looping hook of Furs’ “Love My Way” just enough so we can recognize the theft but not be swept up by its irresistibility any more. And “Lovers Are Losing” comes off as a heavy-handed laffer. Oxley-Rice’s keyboard is kept busy drenching the tune with prancing crescendos and superfluous noise effects and Chaplin stuffs the bubbly chorus with enough words that he can barely spit them out without needing a breath. “You take the pieces of the dreams that you have/Cuz you don't like the way they seem to be going/You cut them up and spread them out on the floor/You're full of hope as you begin rearranging.” Aren’t refrains supposed to be simple summations?
They don’t handle the grand, sweeping offerings any better. “You Don’t See Me” aches of modern day Bono (Chaplin’s even got the voice just right), and the music is just as unremarkable as, well, today’s U2. Then, the big, begging titular ballad aims to wrench us apart but never really gets off the ground. And Chaplin comes off like Bono again, only the preferable 80s version, but taking on the vaguest of injustices filtered through a Starbucks-world mentality. “I shake through the wreckage for signs of life/Scrolling through the paragraphs/Clicking through the photographs/I wish I could make sense of what we do/Burning down the capitols/Wisest of the animals.” Okay, the human race is flawed. Anything else?
The only bright moments of Perfect Symmetry are typically shamefaced—songs no better than most but so carefully constructed around hook-laden melodies that time would be wasted trying to resist. “You Haven’t Told Me Anything” is as unoriginal a song as you’re likely to hear, but the hammering rhythm right off the bat burrows deep. As for “Pretend You’re Alone,” it’s one-third decent. The production goes into overhaul during the second half and the lyrics are as groan-worthy as anything before (“We are just the monkeys who fell out of the trees/We are blisters on the earth/We are not the flowers, we're the strangling weeds/In the meadow”). But early on, “Pretend”’s musical section is as understated and effective as ever before. Predictably, it doesn’t last.
Keane positions Perfect Symmetry to be the album that breaks them free from their Coldplay-lite label. But the overwhelming themes of human kind, literal and figurative evolution and man’s indecency require a grounded reflection. Instead, they soup up every song like they were soaring love anthems, crisp new wave gems or woe-is-me breakup ballads. If the music was edgier or craftier, we could forgive the pretentious statements. If the words were actually meaningful, the huge sound could be contextually appropriate. But they fail at both aspects, leaving this sonically straight-faced record to drown in the morass. If Chaplin wants us to feel his pain, he’s halfway there. I’m hurting, all right.
"Perfect Symmetry" is on sale October 14, 2008 from Island.
