2008年10月《Times》评价在伦敦Forum的表演

October 1, 2008
Keane at the Forum, NW5

Lisa Verrico 4/5

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/live_reviews/article4854334.ece

Hands up who foresaw Keane bouncing back with an Eighties synth-pop sound and the singer Tom Chaplin on guitar? Indeed, who imagined Keane bouncing back at all? After they failed to match the success of their debut album, the five million-selling, piano-heavy Hopes and Fears, with their darker follow-up Under the Iron Sea, there was a creeping sense that Keane’s moment had come and gone.

Then, last month, up popped Spiralling on the internet. Downloaded more than half a million times in the week it was available free, the single was a sleek, upbeat, synth-driven pop-rocker that had Chaplin shouting out lines like a PG Shaun Ryder. If it doesn’t end up in the lists of best British singles this year, Keane will have been robbed.

The forthcoming third album, Perfect Symmetry, isn’t all as adventurous, but on its first live outing it had enough surprises and potential future hits to win Keane a new army of fans. How many of the old ones will stay with them is another matter. Certainly, there were a few surprised faces when Chaplin strode on to a stage decorated with geometric patterns – OK, different-coloured triangles, but it still looked good – clutching an electric guitar and squeezed into a pair of skintight jeans he couldn’t have got past his knees last year. Their songwriter Tim Rice-Oxley had electric keyboards piled up round his piano and a bass player had been added to the line-up. Only Richard Hughes, the drummer, let down the band’s more aggressive look by wearing a pastel pink T-shirt.

Opening with the first single The Lovers are Losing, released next month, was wise. A mix of old and new Keane, it gave fans the chance to adjust. Not so Better Than This, a stripped-down ode to Visage and Ultravox with a nod to XTC’s Making Plans For Nigel, the skittery beats-backed You Haven’t Told Me Anything or the spacey, pacy Again & Again, which was almost completely unrecognisable as Keane.

The problem came when trying to slot old hits into the set. Everybody’s Changing and Somewhere Only We Know started mass sing-alongs, but their much slower tempo brought the energy on stage to a standstill. Moreover, Chaplin sang the new songs with a passion absent from the old, dropping to his knees, jumping on the drum riser and attacking his guitar. Whisper it quietly, Keane just got cool.