2009年2月Clickmusic.com采访Tim

Interview: Keane
Clickmusic.com
http://www.clickmusic.com/articles/10218/Interview-Keane.html

Keane have just kicked off a UK arena tour for their third album ‘Perfect Symmetry’, one of Clickmusic’s favourites of 2008.

We get pianist and songwriter Tim Rice-Oxley on the phone in Newcastle, where he tells us how he feels about the reactions to their most vibrant album to date.

How is life on the road for the Perfect Symmetry tour comparing to Under The Iron Sea’s?
It’s been brilliant so far. Under The Iron Sea was divided into two halves I suppose. There was the bit before our enforced break, which was not hugely enjoyable and the bit afterwards which was really fun. We’re just getting started I suppose, we had the European tour and lots of stuff in the UK towards the end of the year, and we’ve just been having a really great time. The new songs are a lot more energised, it’s more colourful and varied, and it makes it really fun to play live.

How have the new songs worked out since you started playing them live in London last Autumn?
It’s funny how you can never predict what’s going to work live. Songs like ‘Better Than This’, and one of the best songs in our set now is ‘You Haven’t Told Me Anything’, which is not a single, or hasn’t been yet, but it’s just very uptempo and built around a pounding groove and is very different from anything we’ve done before. It’s turned out to be a fantastic moment in our set. ‘Perfect Symmetry’ itself is a pretty enormous moment, with everyone, especially if you’ve got an arena full of people, singing along. It’s a pretty amazing thing to be a part of. ‘Spiralling’ is one that really gets people going.

Do you find people in the UK are less likely to dance, as they’re not supposed to for Keane?
Yeah, maybe in Europe people are a bit more up for it, but you also have to accept that people need time to get used to the new songs and get used to the fact that there’s a slightly different side to Keane. Part of the thrill for us is presenting that side of us to fans and people generally, and seeing how they react.

How did you meet your new bassist Jesse Quin and get him involved in the band?
He’s one of those people who sort of crops up all over the place, playing with indie bands – he’s played with Noah And The Whale and Laura Marling. He was working as part of our touring crew on a couple of tours, being a production assistant, and we became friends. We’d been debating the issue of whether to get a bassist for about nine years, and he just seemed like a person who’d fit in really well. Originally he was meant to just come and rehearse the new songs with us before recording, then he ended up playing on the record and coming on tour with us. He’s become a really good friend and a great person to have on stage with us.

Most session musicians are in the dark, in the corner, but he seems to be at the forefront of everything you do. Are you looking to have him a full time member?
I don’t think any of us want to put too much pressure on the situation, because we’ve had such a good time so far. We made a conscious decision when we started playing together, back in January last year, that we woudn’t treat him like a session musician. All of us hated that idea, so I guess he was as involved in making the record as any of us. He really feels like a part of the band and someone that we love hanging out with. I don’t know what the answer is – I don’t know if he’d want to! If he lasts a couple of years without us driving each other mad, then we’ll see how it goes!

Now the album’s been out a while, how do you feel about people’s reactions to it?
I’ve been really pleased actually. It’s funny how those who’ve, I dunno, been a bit snobby about us in the past suddenly seem to like Keane a lot more, which is a good thing! It’s always nerve-wracking putting out a record and it’s even more nerve-wracking if you do something a bit different. For me, the feeling that we’ve done a better record from a songwriting point of view, and more creatively interesting, and that for me is, what we wanted the most. My favourite comments are when people say, oh you can’t be sure what the next record’s going to sound like right now. For me, that’s what I love about the bands I love the most, like Radiohead or Depeche Mode. If we get to a point where people think that about us, then it will be a really exciting achievement.

How have your fans reacted to the changes?
We meet a lot of our fans, and we have a really amazing fanbase I have to say. People tend to be incredibly passionate about Keane, from when we started playing pubs and before we recorded our first album. Most people seem to be into it and excited by it. Inevitably there is a small proportion who only liked ‘Somewhere Only We Know’, and ‘Spiralling’ is far too weird for them [laughs] and the kind of music they like, but that’s absolutely fine. If it was easy and safe to be something different, then everyone would do it, and that’s the reason most bands end up making the same record over and over again. They don’t want to lose any of their fans. Actually, our fans have been really, really good about this record.

Perfect Symmetry’s songs sound far less introspective than those on Under The Iron Sea – were you in a comfortable place when it came to writing them?
Yeah, we all felt happier and more positive, and also the sense that the last record and that kind of introversion… it felt like it was a little bit too self-obsessed. Maybe not too self-obsessed, but when you spend that much time scrutinising your own thoughts, and then playing those songs every night for 18 months, you know, that felt quite emotionally gruelling at the time! We felt happier in ourselves, and wanted to make a record that was more outward-looking and philosophical, and actually said for me about the world at large. All of us are great humanists, if that’s not too pretentious an idea, and the record is an infusion of a great love of humanity, and sympathy for everyone on the planet. Expressing that in pop music is not easy and I guess that was an exciting challenge for us.

A lot of your songs seem to be based on friendship, rather than being straightforward romantic love songs. Has that been deliberate?
Not really. There are definitely love songs on all three albums, but they tend to be quite skewed approaches to that subject. Like ‘Atlantic’, on the second record, is a song I wrote mainly about my wife, and it’s basically a song about being afraid of dying alone. So it’s not exactly Westlife! I think friendship is a very important thing for me, and that lifetime bond between friends is an amazingly powerful thing. I guess it’s a big part of my conscious for one reason or another!

How did you approach the recent ‘Perfect Symmetry’ radio edit, as a lot of the meaning of the song was lost with entire sentences being removed.
I did the radio edit myself, and it’s very tricky, as all of us love that song and think it’s the best thing we’ve ever done. All of us wanted to hear it on the radio, and I think the grim reality of radio programming is that they seem to be reluctant to play anything over three minutes long, which is a pretty dismal state of affairs. But anyway, I tried to do the best justice to the song I possibly could. But I agree it doesn’t have the same power it has in its five and half minute sprawling glory.

Three albums in, how is your relationship with your label?
It’s really good. We made the decision early on to insist on total creative control over everything, which is something you’d think you’d be able to take for granted, but it’s something a lot of bands don’t seem to have. Island have a great history of working with artists rather than treating people like a product. They respect who we are, and it’s been really good, and still is!