This may be my most rambling poorly organized review
ever, but we’ll see how it goes.
For the concert itself, it was really good. As I said, it
was the first concert that I have gone to alone, and knowing that can turn out
okay has opened up my options some, as I have bought single tickets to three
concerts since then. (To be fair, those are all general admission shows, as
Keane was, so other people can join up later and it’s not an issue.)
One thing that I found kind of funny is that I got a
great e-mail from the Crystal Ballroom (venue) on the day of the concert, with
information about line and times and it was very helpful, but either there or
on a sign, there was a warning about bright lights, in case you were seizure
sensitve. Honestly, it never got that strobe-y, but I am not prone to seizures
so what would I know. However, it was brighter than most shows, which meant
that my photos were less awful than usual, which is why I have included a few.
The concert was really good. I came home and sent a tweet
to Keane and Richard Hughes (drums – he’s the only one on Twitter last I
checked, but he is my favorite so it works out) that it was perfect, and they
played every song that I could possibly have wanted. Later on I thought of
others that they could have played that would have been nice, but still, it was
great song after great song, and the crowd was really into it.
The crowd was much younger than I expected, and I had
some very annoying young people push in front of me, which would have been okay
if the girls hadn’t been so stupid and the one guy hadn’t been so tall.
However, the other guy, after one of the songs we just kind of looked at each
other, and nodded, and we had this moment. I don’t know you, and your friends
have irritated me, but at this moment we are emotionally in sync because of our
response to the music, we are united, and that was kind of cool.
Like many people, my first introduction to Keane was
hearing “Somewhere Only We Know” on the radio, and it instantly grabbed me.
It’s a very powerful song. Based on that alone is pretty much why I wanted to
see them back in 2006. Honestly, I hadn’t thought much about their music beyond
that, until later.
I guess the first step came at, if I recall, a McDonald’s
in Rotorua New Zealand. I think that’s where we were. It was on that trip
anyway. We were eating in the restaurant and they had a video screen, and they
played some pretty good videos, including “Is It Any Wonder”. I realized I
liked it, so I was going to watch it again, and that led to more videos. There
were two songs that ended up being especially important to me shortly after.
I have written before about how the period of
unemployment that followed that trip, and how much it altered my sense of myself,
and the depression that came with it. Yes, My Chemical Romance’s “I’m Not Okay”
was my anthem for the rebellious side of that, but for the aching side it was
”Everybody’s Changing”.
I have also written how the loss of the job was quickly
followed by illness, and isolation, and then death, and they helped me there
too. It took a while to find a song for Josh, and that ended up being “Kids in
the Street” by the All-American Rejects, but right away there was a song for
Uncle Paolo, and that was “A Heart to Hold You”. It wasn’t even a regular
track. It was something they did on a radio show, but people recorded it and
loaded it to Youtube, with stills of the bands or scenes from TV shows. It
would have been easy to miss, but it found me at the right time, when I needed
it.
Frank Iero was writing lately about losing people and how
hard it is to be helpful, and I’ve run into that too. I am religious, I believe
these separations are temporary, but it doesn’t stop the pain. There would be
something wrong with our hearts if we didn’t feel it. So, all you can really
say is “I’m sorry this hurts and I know I can’t help, but I care”, and somehow
that does help. I think it’s because you take away the pressure for them to
feel better, which will proceed at its own pace.
So if we need to feel the pain, and sometimes we have
hard times dealing with it, music is amazingly powerful for that need. In fact,
there is a definite ache to many Keane songs, and that is not a bad thing.
Sometimes it is an ache that not only you relate to, but you specifically need,
because they’re putting it in the song somehow takes a piece of the burden for
you.
In addition, they do it beautifully. I love guitar, and I
have written about that a lot, but does any band use piano and keyboards better
than Keane? I don’t think so. Thank you Tim Rice-Oxley. Combine that with Tom
Chaplin’s amazing voice, and so often their music just soars. They send that
pain into the sky, and perhaps that’s why there ends up being so much hope to
it.
For some of the band’s other good qualities, it may be
easier to start with a song that I did not like right away. “Disconnected” was
the first track I heard off of Strangeland. Actually, it was not just
hearing it, it was also seeing the video.
Now the video is a really well-done homage to old Italian
horror movies. They have really captured the look and feel and mood of them; it
is amazingly done. I don’t really care for those movies, and so initially I was
not thrilled with the song.
As I listened to it more, I could see how it really fit.
Without spoiling too much of the video, it seems to be a story of a haunting,
where the haunter and the hauntee is not immediately clear. There is a man, and
a woman, and they once loved each other, but they cannot see each other now,
they can only be aware of a supernatural presence.
The song is about something undefined that is creeping
into a relationship, and slowly separating the two from each other. It’s an old
issue, perhaps the same one at the root of “Dustland Fairy Tale”, however here
they take it from the prosaic drifting apart to focus more on the eerieness of
it; how is this happening? Are we powerless against it? And in that sense, the
video is perfect.
So that’s two other things that I wanted to point out.
One is there commitment to the visual artistry of the videos, as a natural
extension to the art of the music. I haven’t seen all of their videos, but from
what I have it’s a common thread. They have some really amazing short films.
Also, I have to give them credit for a lot of
intelligence, and a serious application of it to the human condition. That
sounds stuffy, but it isn’t. They have a broad catalog, and it covers a lot.
“Disconnected” is about a relationship that is losing its power but the
trappings are still there, but they have other songs about physical separation,
and togetherness. There are songs about helping yourself, and about helping
each other. Sometimes it gets existential, and often there is a feeling of
something more, but they cover a lot.
So there are songs that have meant a lot to me in
different ways, and there may be songs that haven’t resonated with me yet, but
will. I have not gone through and nerdily created a spreadsheet tracking every
single emotion and situation they cover, but you know, now that I have thought
about it, I might. Anyway, that’s what I mean by “breadth”. There is depth, but
it is the broadness of their scope that speaks to me more.
Keane added Jesse Quin in 2007, and I think he adds an
interesting energy to the band, but they are still very much them: beautiful,
intelligent, and full of meaning. I’m glad they’re around.
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