Keane

Oggi ho finalmente messo le mani sul nuovo cd dei keane preordinato e atteso da Febbraio.
Bellissima la versione deluxe: un librone contenente due cd, bellissime foto e un racconto in pieno stile Keane. Non sò sia stato realizzato nello specifico per l'occasione, ma è ambientato proprio a Bexhill-on-Sea dove si trova l'ormai famoso Sovereign Light Cafe, proprio di fronte al De La Warr Pavilion, il locale dove i ragazzi a Marzo hanno realizzato due concerti di presentazione del nuovo album.

I pensieri mi vorticano ancora nella testa e ho parecchie difficoltà a metterli in ordine.

L'album ad un primo ascolto mi piace molto.
Prima di tutto devo confessare che io sento molti più richiami agli anni '80 in questo album, che non in Perfect Symmetry come tutti hanno sempre detto.
Nel periodo di PS i Keane erano in piena fase di sperimentazione, anche legittima visto la loro caratteristica di non avere un chitarrista nella band alla fine le combinazioni musicali si sarebbero esaurite.
Tra l'altro mi sembra che in diverse canzoni i ragazzi strizzino l'occhio verso Bruce Springsteen. Solo una canzone mi sembra più "beetlesiana"

In Strangeland c'è un effettivo ritorno alle origini, con l'aggiunta di un sound rinnovato (e in certe canzoni anche più "fresco") che solo con le sperimentazioni di Perfect Symmetry si sarebbe potuto realizzare.
Il piano è tornato a farla da padrone. Le chitarre elettriche sono state accantonate (tanto più che Tom detesta suonare la chitarra elettrica )


I testi devo ancora analizzarli per benino. Tim pare non essersi risparmiato sulla lavorazione di questo album, e stasera volevo dargli un'occhiata se non fosse stato che il racconto ha finito per catturare tutta la mia attenzione.

Però la voce di Tom l'ho sentita subito. E porca miseria...è SUBLIME !
Non l'ho mai sentito così...perfetto. Sì la sua voce è perfetta. Meravigliosa. Mentre ascoltavo l'album mi tornava in mente una sua intervista in cui dichiarava che durante la lavorazione, in certi casi temeva di non riuscire ad essere all'altezza, di non riuscire a ottenere il risultato desiderato.
La sua voce suona ancora più bella del solito. Una delizia per le orecchie e una gioia per il cuore !!!
Ci sono dei passaggi in "In Your Own Time" da brividi !!! Una bellissima voce vellutata e calda e soave .

Un paio di canzoni non mi hanno ancora convinto, ma spero di rifarmi presto. Si tratta di "Watch How You Go" e "Black Rain".

Mentre è stato colpo di fulmine con "Day Will Come"

6 - ON THE ROAD

This is the last song I wrote for the album. It started off feeling a bit more country, but gradually got more and more energetic. It's one of my favourites - I love the optimism of it. The feeling of being on an adventure, sleeping under the stars and so on is all stuff that I love - I had just been reading Woody Guthrie's Bound For Glory. And I think it has some of the grace and acceptance that recur in Watch How You Go and In Your Own Time. It's already a real highlight of the set when we play it live.

Tim

7 - THE STARTING LINE

I wrote the tune for this in the back of the bus on a boiling hot day in Boston in the summer of 2010. It was right after the show, and I was first on the bus so I cracked open a cold beer and picked up the guitar, and this spilled out straight away. That's my idea of heaven. We were in Lincoln, Nebraska a couple of days later and everyone had gone off to get some rest in the hotel. The tour bus was parked up outside for the day so I thought I would go on there and be able record the piano and vocal for the demo without disturbing anyone. Anyway I was singing away merrily when I felt the bus pull away and before I knew it I was heading out of town - I ended up doing most of the demo outside a Walgreens in the back-end of nowhere. I'm not sure the bus driver ever realised I was on board.

I like the idea of having to almost make a physical effort to get back on track sometimes, if you get really low or things just aren't going right. It's a very sympathetic song, and I think it a good articulation of the human sympathy that is a big part of what ties the album together.

Tim


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Mi fà troppo ridere l'immagine del nerd Tim che ne ne và sul tour bus mentre tutti gli altri riposano in albergo, per registrare la demo di questa canzone senza disturbare nessuno, e ad un certo punto l'autista prende e mette in moto. E la sua frase "non sono sicuro che l'autista si sia mai reso conto che ero a bordo"
Ma Tim ...

8 - BLACK RAIN

This is a very impressionistic song, written very quickly and drawing on imagery from Ari Folman's amazing animated movie Waltz With Bashir. Every album of ours has a song on it that talks about war, and on Strangeland this is the song. I feel the tone of the song, a bit like the movie, is more about trying to understand, and seeing things from a very human point of view - which is in keeping with the atmosphere of the album as a whole. It's one of the pieces of music of which we're most proud.

Tim


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Una delle canzoni che ancora non mi hanno convinto. Non sapevo comunque che parlasse di guerra. Mi lascia perplessa anche il fatto che ogni album dei Keane ha una war song.
In Under The Iron Sea si sà qual'è, in Hopes And Fears potrei arrivarci...ma mi sfugge la canzone che parla di guerra in Perfect Symmetry
E The Night Sky dove la mettiamo ?

9 - NEON RIVER

When I was moving house back down to Sussex a couple of years ago, there was a huge metal container in the garden with all my music gear in. I was unpacking boxes one day when I had the idea for a song, so I had to go and stand in this cold dark container, fight my way to the piano which was buried under boxes and rugs and so on, and try to sketch out this idea. I like the line about the bowling alley walls. When we were struggling to get anywhere as a band back in 2002-2003 we would meet up every day to rehearse songs, and when we got bored we would go down to the bowling alley outside Bexhill. We got quite good. We had bowling names for each other too. I think mine was Terry.

When I was a teenager I went out with a girl who seemed to have so much confidence and had all these plans and dreams about seeing the world and doing lots of great stuff. Deep down I always felt too scared to go anywhere or do anything, a source of much shame to me. So I felt somewhat left behind. I think I'm still haunted by that feeling even now. But I've always loved being by the Thames, and seeing the lights of the City of London and the South Bank reflected in the water.

Tim


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Non sò come faccia Tim, un notevole compositore e autore, ad apparire sempre così maldestro e goffo quando racconta di sè in fase di scrittura di una nuova canzone.
Cioè....fà troppo ridere l'idea di lui dentro questo container al freddo e al gelo, a cercare di districarsi in mezzo a tutti quegli strumenti, per raggiungere il suo piano, sepolto sotto tutta quell'altra roba, per buttare giù l'idea di questa nuova canzone.

Però al tempo stesso mi piace questo suo lato.

E mi ritrovo in quello che dice nella seconda parte del suo racconto.

10 - DAY WILL COME

This is a pretty simple pop song, but it took me years to finish it. My recollection is that I started it in about 2005. The theme is similar to Silenced By The Night, and it's very uplifting and optimistic. I love the line "sometimes our fingers graze the sky but we can't hold on". The theme of chasing a dream through life, trying to navigate the strange land your dreams lead you into, is the underlying theme of the record, and I think that line sums it up pretty nicely.

Tim

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Iniziata addirittura nel 2005
E se da una parte Tim ha ragione ad associare questa canzone a "Silenced By The Night", dall'altra non capisco come non venga ricollegata anche a "Bend And Break", tanto più che a quanto pare non hanno tanti anni di differenza.
Bellissima canzone comunque. E' una delle mie preferite del nuovo album. E forse proprio perchè mi ricorda "Bend And Break", la mia canzone preferita dei Keane, "Day Will Come" le si è subito affiancata nella mia personale classifica di preferenze

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With Strangeland sitting atop the UK album chart for a second week, we're pleased to report that the next single to be taken from the album will be Sovereign Light Café, which is released on 16th July.

The video for the single - which was filmed in Bexhill-on-Sea recently - will premiere on VEVO on 30th May.
The artwork for the single is below:



fonte: keanemusic.com

11 - IN YOUR OWN TIME

This was another '20 Song Game' effort - I wrote it the same day as Silenced By The Night, Black Rain, and Run With Me (and, for Mt Desolation fans, Dividing Line, Your Kind Of Life, and Wherever You Were Going). I remember finishing it in Toronto on a day off, and then doing the demo in New York City - another duvet-on-my-head moment! Tom was always a bit fan of this one and really pushed it forward. That's often the way it works - you have a lot of songs that everyone agrees on, but then each band member will have a song that they really champion because they hear something in it that everyone else hasn't quite picked up on yet. With Richard it was The Starting Line. Anyway I think the emotional content of this one is quite representative of the whole album - the story is basically "I've realised that I have no idea what's going on in life, so I'm not going to judge anyone else!" I feel it has an atmosphere of sympathy and grace. Also the middle 8 is one of my favourite parts of the record. Under the word "time" at the end of the middle 8 you may be able to make out the four of us all singing "Aaaaah" very operatically. Like a choir of angels falling down an elevator shaft.

Tim


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I wrote it the same day as Silenced By The Night, Black Rain, and Run With Me (and, for Mt Desolation fans, Dividing Line, Your Kind Of Life, and Wherever You Were Going)

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Aspè...in un giorno ha scritto 6 canzoni + questa 7 ???

Credo di capire le motivazioni di Tom riguardo questa canzone, e allo stesso tempo mi fà piacere scoprire che Richard ha invece un grande feeling con The Starting Line, perchè è un'altra canzone di questo nuovo album che mi piace molto.
Ah...comunque per la realizzazione della demo c'è stato un'altro "duvet-on-my-head moment" !!!

Tim si è finalmente ricordato di mettere il blog per l'ultima canzone di Strangeland.
Ecco a voi:

12 - SEA FOG

This is probably my favourite song on the album. Again, written very quickly - I took inspiration from the fogs that come rolling in off the English Channel down the valley where I live. Even on a sunny day you'll look out of the window and suddenly you can't see anything apart from blank mist. It's spooky.

It's a pretty downbeat song, but I like the fact that the album doesn't just end with a nice, neat "everything's going to be ok" message. Life is not that straightforward, it's unpredictable and uncertain and painted in shades of grey rather than being simple black-and-white. We recorded a version of this song that had a whole extra section in the middle, and had drums and bass and horns and strings on it. But in the end we felt there was some magic in the simplicity of the original demo, so we recorded it again in a much simpler arrangement. I find it emotional to play and I would say it's been the highlight of the recent gigs for me. The nagging feeling of "Is there somewhere I'm meant to be?" is a feeling that I think haunts a lot of people as they get a little older, and the feeling of being "rolled" along by life is part of being human I think.

Tim


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Due discorsi ricorrenti in questo blog.
Da un lato il fatto di preferire un arrangiamento scarno e semplice che amplifica ancora di più l'intensità della canzone (stessa cosa accaduta per Hamburg Song anni fà) e l'equilibrio tra le speranze e le paure. Speranze e Paure che sono una costante dei Keane fin dal primo album (che si intitolava proprio così, Hopes And Fears).
Sembra quasi che Tim abbia bisogno di mantenere questo equilibrio, così, visto che in altre canzoni le speranze erano già state raccontate, ha pensato bene di chiudere l'album con qualcosa di più emotivo, che lasciasse all'ascoltatore la possibilità di vagare su emozioni diverse, di lasciarsi trascinare da pensieri più profondi o malinconici.
Il nostro Tim è fatto così !

William Boyd: Why I love Keane

The bestselling author was entranced the first time he heard them. This passion was reciprocated when Keane wrote a song inspired by his novel Any Human Heart. Here he talks about their relationship and the short story, The Sovereign Light Cafe, that he has written for their No 1 album, Strangeland, and which we will publish here on Saturday

In the broad spectrum of the arts, two worlds rarely overlap – the literary world and the world of rock music. There are exceptions, of course – Salman Rushdie has written the lyrics for a U2 song; Nick Cave has written two fine novels – but these instances are unusual interminglings, I would suggest. My own case is typical. Even though I've been an avid consumer of contemporary music since my early teens, the world of rock music has always been at something of a distance – I listen to it, read about it, I talk about it, but I've had little or no contact with its denizens. It's like the world of astrophysics or the armaments industry, say: I'm aware of these zones of activity but we haven't really bumped into each other, so to speak. Bizarrely, I did get to know David Bowie because we both joined the editorial board of an art magazine at the same time, Modern Painters. We used to sit beside each other – the new boys – at editorial meetings. I've briefly met other rock icons at social occasions but these encounters have been entirely random – and all the more enjoyable for that fact. But the case of Keane and I is different.

In the 1980s and 90s I took something of an aural sabbatical from Anglo/US rock music. Tastes change, I suppose, but I found the rhythms, energies and melodies of Latin American and African music far more beguiling than anything the west was serving up. The music of Elis Regina, Milton Nascimento, Jorge Drexler, Cheikh Lô and Fela Kuti were more familiar to me than Bruce Springsteen and Oasis, for example. I didn't abandon western rock entirely – I kept half an ear open and it was voices that slowly lured me back. Björk started it, then artists such as Polly Paulusma, Fiona Apple, Thea Gilmore began to beguile also – something idiosyncratic and haunting in the voice had to make me want to investigate the music further. And then, in 2003, I heard Keane's debut single, Everybody's Changing, and the voice this time was Tom Chaplin's.

I bought Hopes and Fears, the debut album. It wasn't just Chaplin's ethereal, plangent voice that won me over: Hopes and Fears is an unequivocally great album – not a dud track and with a melodic generosity that was astounding in contemporary British rock. Tim Rice-Oxley's fuzzed keyboards may be the default Keane sound but his gift for writing great three-and-a-half-minute rock/pop songs is prodigious. The album came into the charts at No 1 with a bullet – the first of their five consecutive No 1s. Keane's output is not prolific, it should be stated – four albums and one EP in eight years is almost costive by the standards – and the demands – of the rock-music industry.

So far, so relatively normal. An enthusiasm was born. But one of these strange six-degrees-of-separation moments happened next. The parents of a friend of mine knew Chaplin's parents. Word filtered back that Keane had written a song called Any Human Heart, inspired by my novel of the same name. I think I then selected Hopes and Fears as the one British rock album I had truly enjoyed in a national newspaper Christmas roundup. Did word filter back to Keane? I wondered if it had because out of the blue I was asked to present the band with an award at an MTV ceremony in Amsterdam – I demurred. An invitation to a gig ensued – I couldn't make it. In another newspaper roundup I mentioned Keane as one of my favourite bands. Clearly our orbits were beginning to approach each other, if not intersect. I found it curious how, with no real effort on my part, or on the band's, we seemed to be becoming mysteriously in contact.

I duly bought all their other albums as they were released – Under the Iron Sea, Perfect Symmetry, Night Train – and observed Keane flexing different musical muscles, exploring other musical byways. Finally, eventually, Rice-Oxley and I contrived to meet. We talked about the song Any Human Heart, which, alas, never made the cut for an album. I asked him if he was interested in scoring films – he said he was. We discovered that we shared a near-reverence for the songwriting talents of Paul Simon.

Rice-Oxley and I met again for lunch. By now the band's fifth album was taking shape – Strangeland – a title inspired by the curiously isolated corner of south-east England (East Sussex/west Kent) where Rice-Oxley and Chaplin were born and grew up. South-east England is one of the most heavily populated parts of Europe but there is a significant patch of countryside on either side of the Sussex/Kent border that is strangely remote, both inland and on the coast, even though you are only two hours from London. By another coincidence a significant portion of my new novel, Waiting for Sunrise, also took place in that hinterland and along that coastline. Hastings, Rye, Winchelsea, Deal, Hythe, Battle and Romney Marsh all featured strongly in my narrative.

So when it was suggested that I write a short story to be included in the deluxe CD package of the new album it appeared to me the most natural consequence in the world. It was an interesting challenge, however. It was clear that I couldn't write a kind of fictional "video" of one of the songs. The lyrics did that anyway and a longer, more detailed version of the song would just be redundant. The inspiration had to be more oblique. I decided to choose the title of one of their songs, The Sovereign Light Cafe, as the title for my short story and simply start from there.

The story I wrote isn't remotely a reflection of the song but it is rooted in Bexhill-on-Sea where the action of the song takes place – another of those quintessentially English resorts that line the coast from Brighton to Margate. Bexhill is unique in that it has an art-deco masterpiece parked on its seafront – the De La Warr Pavilion. The Sovereign Light Cafe actually exists further up the promenade from the pavilion and is a classic seaside caff named after the vast, towering lighthouse platform of the Sovereign Light, whose intermittent beam can be made out, as night falls, on the Channel's horizon, many miles offshore.

I went down to Bexhill to savour the atmosphere. Keane were due to play the De La Warr Pavilion as a kind of thank you to the locale that had nurtured and inspired them. The modest front at Bexhill is well tended and somehow has managed to avoid the tawdry seediness that some of the old resort towns have succumbed to. The shingle beach is clean and the flowerbeds are weeded. The place is redolent of a form of timeless English holiday. Seagulls squawk, kids bicycle, old-age pensioners look out at the limitless horizon and contemplate eternity. I wandered up the promenade and had a sausage sandwich and a glass of chardonnay in the Sovereign Light Cafe. I mooched around and took some photographs – ideas for a short story that ended here in Bexhill were beginning to form, almost unbidden.

It goes without saying that Bexhill is very English and Keane's new album (straight to No 1, again) is rooted in this part of England. It's not parochial in any sense: it's more celebratory of the fact that life goes on here – in these out-of-season resorts – with the same intensity and passion, the joy and tragedy, the same mundanity and tedium, as it does anywhere else in the country – or in the world, come to that. Rice-Oxley's rich, melodic gift and his amazing capacity to surprise in the three-minute song is as finely honed on Strangeland as it was on Hopes and Fears. Chaplin's voice is, if anything, displaying more unfettered virtuosity than ever (I recommend a live performance to hear it in its potent, unbridled freedom), Richard Hughes and Jesse Quin form the rest of the tightest of ensembles, developed through years of touring.

Keane are a great British band – honest and dogged in the pursuit of their own particular vision. I feel strangely happy that our slow, serendipitous encounter has, if nothing else, brought the literary world to the world of rock music. Perhaps the meeting will be fruitful in the near future – we wait to see what new dividends may ensue.

fonte

My name is Alex Lake. I'm a photographer and illustrator. I have a website but this blog is for posting random musings and images not all of which are destined to end up there.



A recent commission for me was shooting the album cover and campaign images for Keane’s recent number one album, Strangeland. I knew where the band were coming from sonically with this record having been in and out of the studio with them for over a year documenting the recording process. We had a couple of false starts getting the narrative right for the visuals and eventually we settled on the photographic route you are all familiar with.

The photos were taken in Bexhill-On-Sea last February on what were a couple of the most relentlessly cold days of the year - my car got stuck in frozen snow on the outskirts of the town and I had to frame shots where drifts of frozen snow on the ground were not visible. I’d been on the beach since 4am doing long exposures of the shifting tide. My hands were so numb through my gloves I couldn’t feel my camera at all. I think it was about -8 degrees and colder still with the high winds. It was brutal. I knew I was getting some interesting shots but the weather was massively distracting and I wasn’t sure I was nailing anything that would work as a cover. I wanted to tell a human story without having anyone in the photo itself. I also just wanted to be indoors and out of the spirit shattering cold. I just couldn’t think but I only had a couple of days left to come up with a cover everyone would like. The pressure was getting slightly monolithic from where I was standing.

At around half five in the morning I saw the lights slowly coming on in the towerblocks and I knew from where I was on the beach looking back up at the horizon that that was my shot. It just felt instant. That was it. I was standing right in front of and in, the next album cover. I didn’t think I could come up with another shot in Bexhill that would encapsulate the album better. I shot it fast as I could knowing the moment - and the light - was going to pass very quickly. I hope it captures some of the isolation, intimacy and otherworldliness I felt on that morning. I hope it gets across the idea of a journey. The uphill climb. Of leaving and returning. Of destination. The original shot is fairly colourless, all pale blues punctuated with yellow light as you’d imagine at that time of day. Additional image grading was done by the album’s splendid designer Rob Cherny (Tourist) to fit the vibe and route of the campaign he’d reached with the band. You can see additional images of the limited edition A4 book featuring my photos that he designed for the album here on my website: bit.ly/KGN5tU

What I like about the image is that it is a genuine story. We didn’t contrive which lights came on or that I was going to frame that shot at all. It was the first time I’d been to that part of the seafront so there is a truth to the original photo that I really love. It is just a portrait of life in that town. I went back on consecutive mornings hoping to get more of the same sort of thing, to provide the band with more options on those and other buildings but of course the lights never came back on that early again, always once the sun was up and in that slip of time between night and day where I got my cover and life feels like it has momentarily paused, it remained dark.


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Qualche approfondimento su William Boyd preso direttamente dai post del sito ufficiale italiano di keanemusic:

Per chi non sapesse chi è costui, trattasi di uno scrittore inglese, che ha scritto per i Keane un breve racconto intitolato "Sovereign Light Café" e che si trova nelle prime pagine del libro fornito con la versione deluxe di Strangeland.

Nel 2010 Keanemusic ha iniziato un blog chiamato "Tim's Book Club", dove Tim parla di volta in volta di alcuni dei suoi libri preferiti. Alcuni sono stati fonte di ispirazione per le sue canzoni, ed uno in particolare sembra abbia attirato la sua attenzione, visto che l'ha nominato anche in altre occasioni: Any Human Heart (in italiano il titolo è: Ogni Cuore Umano) di William Boyd. Questo è il "Tim's Book Club" che riguarda questo libro, che onestamente ho letto un po' di tempo fa e ho gradito molto.
L'ultimo blog risale a gennaio 2011, metto qui l'indirizzo perche' se siete interessati a leggere anche tutti gli altri, in basso trovate i link di tutti i precedenti.
www.keanemusic.com/archive-comment.php?id=3337

fonte

Tim ha postato un blog anche per la nuova Bside Difficult Child. Ecco a voi:

"I like the fact that the lyrics of this song are slightly schizophrenic. Or maybe 'conflicted' would be a kinder way to put it. They're very male.

A slightly geeky factette is that with the line "I thought that you'd be waiting like a soldier's queen", I was thinking of the story of Odysseus and Penelope.

We recorded a lot of this in hotel rooms on our recent US tour - mainly in Lincoln, Nebraska and Salt Lake City, Utah. I remember in Salt Lake that because the hotel room was basically our dressing room for the gig there was a lady posted to stand guard outside the room all day. By the time Tom had sung his vocal about 50 times and I had then gone in and belted out a load of weird, high-pitched backing vocals, the poor woman looked pretty traumatised. Ah the glamour...


Tim"

Laura Jansen si è avvalsa della collaborazione di Tom Chaplin per "Same Heart", canzone composta in occasione di una campagna di sensibilizzazione contro la mortalità infantile.

Ecco il video-lyric.

As the year winds to a close we have, once again, asked the members of Keane to share their highlights of the last 12 months with you folks. Jesse was the first to reply to our email....

1. Favourite album of 2012?
Young & Old by Tennis.

2. Favourite single?
Default by Django Django.

3. Best gig you saw?
Paul Simon in Brussels.

4. Best gig you played?
Porto Coliseum.

5. Best film you saw?
Moonrise Kingdom.

6. Best journey you made?
The journey home the day after the last gig in Bournemouth.

7. Best TV show you watched?
Band Of Brothers (Only just got around to it).

8. Best book you read?
If Not Now, When? by Primo Levi.

9. Best meal you ate?
Street food in a car park in Bangkok with Tim and my friends Rich and Erika.

10. Best thing you bought yourself?
A Republic resonator guitar.

11. Best thing someone else bought for you?
I have no idea. Just a beer somewhere nice probably. Ha ha.

12. Best website you visited or app/podcast you downloaded?
Pinterest is alright.

13. Best thing that happened in 2012 for Keane?
Yet ANOTHER number one record. Urgh.

14. Best thing that happened in 2012 for you?
Finding a new room to set up all my music stuff.

15. Finally, what are you looking forward to in 2013?
Being at home a bit more and actually seeing my family for once.

1. Favourite album of 2012?
Tough question! Either The Maccabees - Given to the Wild, or
Zulu Winter - Language.

2. Favourite single?
Madness by Muse or Closer by Tegan and Sara.

3. Best gig you saw?
Muse in Paris.

4. Best gig you played?
London O2 Arena, or Asuncion, Paraguay.

5. Best film you saw?
I love Bond films, think Daniel Craig is brilliant, and loved Skyfall. I also loved Argo, and We need to talk about Kevin (as much as you can love something so dark!). I really enjoyed 21 Jump Street, The Bourne Legacy, The Dictator… but the best thing I saw was Werner Herzog's Into the Abyss, a really powerful documentary about the death penalty and the aftermath of a terrible triple homicide in Texas.

6. Best journey you made?
The train from Seattle to Vancouver was amazing, despite the 7.30am departure time (cheers Col!).

7. Best TV show you watched?
Breaking Bad

8. Best book you read?
Legacy of Ashes - the History of the CIA, by Timothy Weiner

9. Best meal you ate?
Dinner and a pint at Mulligans Stoneybatter with Tim, Jesse & John Roderick on a night off in
Dublin.

10. Best thing you bought yourself?
A Brompton folding bike that I took on the European tour

11. Best thing someone else bought for you?
Tickets to the Paralympics Athletics in the Olympic Stadium.

12. Best website you visited or app/podcast you downloaded?
Website - www.100wildhuts.blogspot.co.uk/
App - London Coffee
Podcast - The Life Scientific /
WTF with Marc Maron - check out the Bryan Cranston, Michael
Cera and Jimmy Kimmel interviews.

13. Best thing that happened in 2012 for Keane?
Strangeland going to number 1 in the UK (thanks everyone!), and us still going to new countries.

14. Best thing that happened in 2012 for you?
#Caturday!

15. Finally, what are you looking forward to in 2013?
I love being on a tourbus in the states, so January is going to be great, and then South America, but also some time at home - it's been a busy year!

1. Favourite album of 2012?
Cat Power - Sun. Very sultry and soulful.

2. Favourite single?
Solange Knowles - Losing You. This song (and video) blew my mind.


3. Best gig you saw?
Bruce Springsteen in Barcelona. He played Racing In The Street. What more can I say?

4. Best gig you played?
Maybe Paraguay. 13,000 people on a beautiful warm evening in South America. Doesn't get much
better than that.

5. Best film you saw?
Moonrise Kingdom.

6. Best journey you made?
Driving through the snowy Austrian mountains towards Ljubljana was a beautiful morning on the bus.

7. Best TV show you watched?
Probably the BBC Imagine documentary about Bridge over Troubled Water. Very, very inspiring.

8. Best book you read?
I loved The Dinner by Herman Koch. A slightly strange and surprising book.

9. Best meal you ate?
Jesse's friends Rich and Erica took us to an incredibly low-key street food place in an alley in Bangkok. Simple but both exciting and delicious.

10. Best thing you bought yourself?
One of the reproduction G-Plan sofas that Hemingway Design have just done. I didn't think I would
ever get so excited about a sofa. Should I be worried?

11. Best thing someone else bought for you?
Somebody in São Paulo (I'm sorry, I can't remember who) gave me a model train which I love. It's now sitting on top of a speaker in my studio.

12. Best website you visited or app/podcast you downloaded?
damnyouautocorrect.com. Read it and weep.

13. Best thing that happened in 2012 for Keane?
It's kind of obvious, but being number 1 again really was amazing. Strangeland was hard work to make and it was a very rewarding and emotional moment when it topped the charts.

14. Best thing that happened in 2012 for you?
Rediscovering my love of being a tourist. I want to spend the rest of my life travelling and learning.

15. Finally, what are you looking forward to in 2013?
Travelling and learning!

1. Favourite album of 2012?
Alt-J - An Awesome Wave,
Here We Go Magic - A Different Ship. Both utterly spellbinding albums
and impossible to choose between them.

2. Favourite single?
Don't know about singles but I loved Always Been Your Love off In Our Heads by Hot Chip.

3. Best gig you saw?
Neil Hannon at the Royal Festival Hall. I also fulfilled a dream by getting to sing on stage with him.
Every Divine Comedy album is a work of art - particularly Absent Friends and Regeneration.

4. Best gig you played?
Hands down it would have to be the one in Paraguay. It was awesome in every way - the venue, the warm evening breeze, the fans and we played with a lot of passion.

5. Best film you saw?
A lot to choose from - Killer Joe, Searching For Sugarman made me cry, Cabin In The Woods is a left turn for a tired old genre - which is nice(!).

6. Best journey you made?
Wandering the streets of Ljubljana in the snow then sitting down to eat roast chestnuts on a bench by the river.

7. Best TV show you watched?
The Hour is pretty great, Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 8 was the best season yet.

8. Best book you read?
The Crow Road by Iain Banks - bittersweet and lovely.

9. Best meal you ate?
Noma in Copenhagen. Although how can it be that despite a 20 course lunch, I felt hungry three
hours later? Greed perhaps?

10. Best thing you bought yourself?
I'm struggling here - I honestly can't think of ANYTHING useful that I bought - it's just a succession of useless things that I don't need.

11. Best thing someone else bought for you?
My wife bought me a bird table for outside the kitchen window - now I'll never get bored doing the washing up.

12. Best website you visited or app/podcast you downloaded?
TuneIn Radio - Test Match Special and Radio 4 can now be with me wherever I am in the world.

13. Best thing that happened in 2012 for Keane?
Number 1 album for the fifth time. Not many bands can say that… apart from The Beatles!

14. Best thing that happened in 2012 for you?
See above. Escaping with my sanity - there were some dicey times in there.

15. Finally, what are you looking forward to in 2013?
Doing some songwriting, becoming the fittest I've ever been in my life, breaking 70 on a golf course (don't worry if you don't know what that means), spending some time in my garden and my studio.

Sembrerebbe che anche per i Keane sia arrivato il momento per un best of. La notizia è cominciata a circolare da un paio di giorni su tumblr e sembra piuttosto veritiera visto che i ragazzi ne dovrebbero aver parlato in un paio di interviste e Richard avrebbe twittato qualcosa a riguardo.
In ogni caso non c'è ancora nessuna ufficializzazione, ma si dice che il cd potrebbe uscire a fine anno.