Now I’m not going to try and suggest for a moment that just to the right of middle of the road is an especially perilous place to be. It’s not. But it is still a wholly commendable feat to knock around there day in day out and then go and make a record as bracing in parts as ‘Hopes & Fears’. Though labelled “indie-without-guitars” by all and sundry who see them as a logical progression from Travis and specifically Coldplay, they’re not. They don’t pretend to be. While those two bands have egged themselves into pursuing classic androgynous pop sounds – spurred on by first successes, self-centred ambitions and the realisation that they may never get onto Parkinson without a nudge that way – Keane have been keen to scrape the ceiling of the lowest common denominator from the off.
The scope of Tim Rice-Oxley’s (and tell me they’re not aiming for pop aristocracy with a name like that) grand piano playing is certainly focused but calls to mind a surprising assortment of chart-botherers, considering they were just the new Coldplay 5 minutes ago, from Queen to Elton John to the Eurythmics. But Tom Chaplain’s smooth, red-blooded 80s pop vocal, well bred, functional and wrapped in emotion that maybe he doesn’t quite understand fully yet, is the trophy piece here. Like Ricky Ross from Deacon Blue, Morten Harket voice of A-HA and George Michael swapping spit.
No faffing, just big-berthed pop songs you know you can safely buy for your girlfriend, sing in the bath with a candle burning and a glass of wine on the side, or hear playing inoffensively on the Vic jukebox on Eastenders. And probably read the papers to on a Sunday morning. And have on a tape in the car. Everyday music, designed to sit comfortably alongside everything else, and everyday topics. Lovesongs you can take for your own, heartbreak songs too. An accessible melancholy.
Almost inevitably the album flags through the middle, but epic lullaby ‘Bedshaped’ pulls it back for the close and ‘Somewhere Only We Know’, ‘Bend & Break’, the Aqualung-esque ‘We Might As Well Be Strangers’ and future stadium sing-along ‘Everybody’s Changing’ keep the quality density high in the first instance. It’s more difficult not to like this than it is to like it. It might not make your life significantly better, but it certainly won’t make it any worse. And you’ll have something to put on when your mum comes round.