Keane

Rehab, the Berlin record, alternative media and hyping Dead Prez. Hang on, is this Keane we're talking to?

You don't expect soft rockers to have problems. They make their emotional ballads, play them to adoring fans, sit around with a cup of tea afterwards and head off back to the manor for a kip before the next Royal gala show.

Things are never what they seem though; beneath the veneer of culpable tenderness, cracks appear and soon enough large amounts of mind altering intoxicants are needed to keep that veneer in place.

Such was the case for multi million record selling Keane, with two number one albums and a singer with a predilection for self destructive behaviour.

Drummer for the band, Richard Hughes is telling Real Groove that their new album Perfect Symmetry very nearly didn't happen. With Tom Chaplin's drinking and drug taking getting the better of him the band cancelled their 2006 North American tour as the singer entered the Priory Clinic for rehab in August of that year.

“He came straight out of rehab in October, into the tour bus and onto the road. That was really liberating and exciting. I mean that's what we do. All of the bullshit and distractions, I feel like it all allowed us to drive away from it, drive off in the bus, leave it back there and fuck off on the road.”

Hughes relates that the band reconnected during the remainder of their European dates, enjoying the simple pleasures of hanging out together, which went on to form the basis for much of the lyrical content on the new album.

Album number three is always a difficult time for any band, but for one having nearly broken up perhaps even more so. Hughes maintains though that there was no major plan to make this album a special return or a great successor to their previous material.

“I wouldn't say that we're a band who makes conscious decisions,” confesses the skins-man. “I don't think we're intelligent enough to do that and I think the minute bands really deliberately do something that doesn't come naturally to them it can be dangerous. With this record the only real decision we made was to get John Brion in (who has worked with Fiona Apple and Kanye). He arrived really jet-lagged and in a haze of caffeine and sat us down and told us to go and listen to those brilliant records like Bowie where you wish you'd been at the studio when they made it. And not to discount anything because we think it might be tasteless, just try it and then decide whether it's any good.”

For that reason you will hear the band all proclaim with unbridled vigour a series of 'Ooooo's' on first single Spiralling. It was something that Tom had pictured in his head and in the spirit of the session they didn't question, they just did it.

Another producer who worked on the album was Stuart Price AKA Jacques Lu Cont AKA Les Rhythmes Digitales etc. As the band all loved his remix of The Killers' Mr. Brightside they wanted the thin white duke to sprinkle some of his magic on their own creations. He contributed Again & Again and Black Broken Heart to the album; John Brion only You Can't Tell Me Anything; Keane did the rest themselves.

The bulk of the album was recorded in Berlin where the band decamped to in order to give themselves a different view from the usual landscapes of Sussex where the first two albums were recorded.

“Berlin has this amazing scene going on at the moment and it's one of the most exciting places on the planet. We also didn't want to fly. So we got the night train to Berlin and we woke up as we got to Zoo station with graffiti everywhere. Obviously there were Bowie records, Depeche Mode, U2 and Lou Reed records that were made there that we grew up listening to and we just feel it's a city that's just getting started on its next phase.”

Part of Keane's next phase appears to be the relaxation of their previous embargo of guitars on their albums. The band had occasionally acknowledged the old stringed instrument during live sets with acoustic interludes, but their cover of The Cult's She Sells Sanctuary last year, which turned up on a B-side release heralded that the band were ready for some further experimentation. Listening to selected tracks from Perfect Symmetry before I talk to Richard it is apparent they are not just embracing the guitar, but perhaps making up for lost time as well. The band are also sounding more pop oriented, but then after the comparative darkness of Under the Iron Sea that wouldn't be hard. Tom lyrics though are as searching as ever.

Richard offers up one of Tom's songs by way of example: “there's a song called The Lovers are Losing. It's not about a couple. It's about the 60's ideology, about lovers versus haters and the way that the people who have that hippie-ish dream, the lovers, are losing. It's the people who run Haliburton and Exxon and Mobil – who also happen to be politicians and have friends in high places, they're the ones who seem to be winning.”

If Richard's tone seems a little defeatist, it's because he's been reading. He starts rattling off a list of alternative independent media websites he's been checking out, citing books by Chomsky and Jeremy Scahill that have also ended up on his bedside table and I start to wonder where he's managed to muster the smile he's been wearing for most of the interview thus far.

“I'm just trying to be more informed,” he rebukes. “I don't know if it's because I'm getting older and I give a shit about this stuff but that's why we did Live Earth. I mean if Al gore who should have been president is struggling to get his voice heard then the world is fucked up. I felt like I wanted to be more informed about this stuff. Art has always been a source of protest, whether it's writers or painters, musicians or poets and I think we feel like this is a pretty dark time and I think Tim's definitely articulated that in this record.”

In the past it was this outpouring of emotion that caused The Darkness ex-bassist Frankie Poullain to remark that Keane were “namby bedwetters”, unwittingly coining a term for a whole genre, and a rather funny one at that.

“I don't think about it to be honest,” responds Richard to the label. “It's easy to get into slagging matches but people only do it to get publicity. We don't really play that game. It's a tabloid game and you live and die by it. You've only got to see the way every year someone gets built up and for some musicians it's their way of getting publicity. The minute you start hearing some people gobbing off about how shit they think everything is, you know they've got a new record out. For some reason, saying something is bad gets so much more attention than saying something is good.”

So to focus on the good, what makes Keane happy right now?

“I think the new Death Cab for Cutie record is really good, the MGMT is insane, fantastic. The Vampire Weekend record, Blitzen Trapper. And of course the usual diet of things like Bowie, Talking Heads and all the things you'd expect Keane to listen to. I mean I'm probably the last person on the planet to get into Dead Prez but I just love them. I love the eloquent political nature of them. The fact that they played a protest gig outside the Denver Democratic National Convention recently was brilliant.”

And then in a final self deprecating turn Richard thinks about what he's just said: “but it's funny you know, how many white indie bands are there who sell a few records and start on about this sort of shit?”