{"id":41248,"date":"2008-12-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/perfect-symmetry\/"},"modified":"2008-12-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-04T00:00:00","slug":"perfect-symmetry","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/perfect-symmetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Perfect Symmetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really should\u2019ve loved this disc (the third from British pop darlings Keane). I wore out 2004\u2019s anthemic Hopes And Fears<\/i> and its follow-up, the darker, bitterer Under The Iron Sea, <\/i>which raged as much as a piano-based, Coldplay-esque trio can.\u00a0 Keane has always taken flak for sounding, well, boring, though they\u2019re excellent at crafting atmospheric pop gems. Sounds a little like Coldplay\u2019s dilemma, which resolved itself nicely with this year\u2019s surprisingly full and punchy Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends. <\/i>As for Keane, they\u2019ve tried with Perfect Symmetry <\/i>to reinvent themselves into a tricked-out, synth-loving trio (with guitars finally thrown in), reminiscent of Tears For Fears (and a little bit of Queen) with its lively melodies and shiny new instrumentation.\u00a0 So, did the transformation work?<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Well, sort of. Starting off, lead single \u201cSpiralling\u201d is fantastic and slickly catchy, more pumped-up in these four minutes than Keane has been in their entire career. Co-produced by Jon Brion and Stuart Price, \u201cSpiralling\u201d departs from all the moody shimmer of their previous material, instead boasting some excellent \u201880s textures: thundering drum loops, hypnotic background \u201cwoohs,\u201d and chunky keyboards. Things thankfully stay in this energetically electronic vein a little longer. \u201cThe Lovers Are Losing\u201d rides in on strident synths and lead singer Tom Chaplin\u2019s expansive vocals as he scrambles through octaves — plus, there\u2019s a lovely refrain, featuring some of the better lyrics on a disc that has a tendency to dip into empty clich\u00e9s and Chaplin\u2019s broad stabs at insight. \u201cYou Haven\u2019t Told Me Anything\u201d comes swathed in distortion and swerving electronic basslines, while \u00a0\u201cBetter Than This\u201d is all jittery handclaps and piles of peppy instrumentation, fairly vague lyrically but it\u2019s hard to mind with hooks this breezy. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

So far, so good — until it starts to go bad. It\u2019s always been easy to forgive Keane their lapses into cheesiness because they\u2019re so earnest about it, and plus, the songs usually end up gorgeous enough to buoy some laughable lyrics. But Perfect Symmetry <\/i>ends up being too top heavy, and after the shimmery, synthy material is over, you get stuff like the maudlin title track. \u201cPerfect Symmetry\u201d is over-the-top in every respect: Chaplin enunciates every syllable, draining emotion for all it\u2019s worth, and he ends up turning potentially interesting images such as \u201cSpineless dreamers, hide in churches \/ Pieces of pieces of rush hour buses \/ I dream in emails, worn-out phrases, mile after mile of just empty pages\u201d into one massive symphonic blur, buried in layers of piano and strings and harmonies. <\/o:p><\/p>\n

Each and every song has the same glossy approach, but even that grows tired after enough go-around, especially with the bland (and occasionally preachy) lyrics. Taken on their own, songs like the expansive, slow-burning\u00a0 \u201cYou Don\u2019t See Me\u201d and \u201cAgain And Again\u201d are decent, built around some slickly awesome riffs, but it\u2019s hard to buy lines like,\u201d Oh, truly we are a fortunate few \/ Who turn on your axis, revolve around you \/ All spinning outwards from your sun\u201d or\u00a0 \u201dThe lightest words are heavy \/ And promises are easy \/ And no one’s ever happy or sad for very long.\u201d Far too often, Chaplin\u2019s attempts at poetry and profundity just end up nonsensical, something that not even the glitziest of instrumentation can distract from. Even worse, when they revert back to their piano-based balladeering, like on the stripped-down \u201cBlack Burning Heart\u201d and closer \u201cLove Is The End,\u201d it\u2019s almost painfully plodding, lacking all the grace<\/st1:personname> of Hopes And Fears\u2019<\/i> standout moments as well as any of the liveliness they\u2019ve found here.<\/o:p><\/p>\n

Kudos to Keane for veering away from their signature sound. Moments of Perfect Symmetry <\/i>are exhilarating, if not particularly groundbreaking. But it\u2019s not definitely not enough to anchor an entire album, and instead of flaming out as bright as the energy of the initial songs would suggest, this disc just stumbles towards its close. <\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":29649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[7752],"rating":[5619],"class_list":["post-41248","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-keane","rating-rating-c"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41248"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41248"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}