Keane - Under the Iron Sea
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CD Details
Artist: KeaneEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2006-06-20
Music Label: Interscope Records
Product features:
- KEANE UNDER THE IRON SEA
- Atlantic
- Is It Any Wonder?
- Nothing In My Way
- Leaving So Soon?
- A Bad Dream
- Hamburg Song
- Put It Behind You
- Crystal Ball
- Try Again
- Broken Toy
- The Frog Prince
Music reviews of Under the Iron Sea
Music Review: Beautiful, interesting, atmospheric, mystical, sweet, and melancholic!
Rating: 5 Stars
Should one compare Hopes and Fears to Under the Iron Sea, when each album is fruit of a separate and individual artistic period in Keane's development? A good point, but one cannot help to do so. So here I go....
The overall feeling of this album is more atmospheric and mystical ("crystal ball", "fairytales") than the overall feeling of Hopes and Fears. Songs show as much melancholy, but in a more peaceful, resigned way. Emotions are less charged, and more subdued melodically and lyrically. However, the songs feel more confident and outgoing --- at times more fun, even though the lyrics sometimes do not match the feeling of the melody.
Listening to this album is as much a pleasure as listening to Hopes and Fears. It is different in the way that Hopes and Fears is more homogenous in its "overall feel". If you are in a certain mood that Hopes and Fears will match, it is easy to listen to the album without skipping songs. Under The Iron Sea is not that way. It has more variety of moods.
*** If you loved Hopes and Fears (like I did), there is a 90% chance you will love this album as well. A big difference lyrically is that Hopes and Fears dealt more with human relationships, whereas Under The Iron Sea is more introspective and deals a bit more with "life out there" overall, not only human/love relationships. Production-wise, Under The Iron Sea is similar to Hopes and Fears, but it definitely holds its own identity --- it does not sound as smooth, due to the purposeful distortions of sound that give the album a stronger, edgier feel at times.
If one could look at Keane as an entity (not as individuals) the "personality" of this album would come across sort of as Keane trying to find peace & equilibrium with less longing and more hope --- more content with life, confident and with less fears. The interesting thing is that even though this is the case musically, there is a hint of darkness and doom throughout the album, lyrically. Very interesting. And even if this is the case, the songs feel very "whole".
Melodically, the album is as superb as Hopes and Fears --- if not more, at points. Melodies are as rich, as piercing, and as unique as ever. If I was FORCED to compare these to others, I would say they sound very Beatles/Abba/E.L.O./O.M.D. (in their sweet melancholy and melodic structure), very A-ha (in their note pattern and the way the keys are used), very Rufus Wainwright (in the way the prolonged notes are expressed vocally) and very Coldplay/Radiohead (in the way the production and arrangements compliment the notes.) The first single is an exception to the above, sounding very U2 in all aspects.
*** 90% of the songs are Great in my humble opinion
I am looking forward to this album growing on me, and standing the test of time like Hopes and Fears has. The beauty of it (melodically, lyrically, and production-wise) will no doubt help it live up to my hopes.
1- Atlantic (10/10)
Gorgeous song! You have to listen to it. It's hard to review it. A perfectly balanced mesh of melancholy, sweetness, hope and fear. It has one verse and one chorus. The verse begins in a Radiohead "in pain" style and turns into an incredibly sweet Beatles-esque chorus that is a gift to the ears and senses. It is a brilliant song that expresses musically what it lyrically tells. It's almost like you don't have to listen to the lyrics to know what the song is saying.
2- Is It Any Wonder? (7/10)
A universal melody --- great that way. I picture Bono, Freddy Mercury, Steve Tyler, Morten Harket, Elton John, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, or George Michael singing this song in their own style, and the song still sounding authentic. The Keane version is upbeat, straight-forward, almost enthusiastic about realizing silly mistakes and misunderstandings of daily life. "Sometimes I get the feeling that I'm stranded in the wrong time, where love is just a lyric in a children's rhyme" is reminiscent of the lack of `fitting-in' expressed in "Everybody's Changing." Make sure you listen to what is beyond the obvious (in the lyrics) and you will realize the political message.
3- Nothing in My Way (9/10)
If you love E.L.O. (I do), this song will fulfill what hasn't been fulfilled inside you melodically in many years. This song has an outstanding melody! Lyrically it great as well, but far from pop and very deep. "Well for a lonely soul, you're having such a nice time".
4- Leaving So Soon? (10/10)
Morten Harket is probably the only male vocalist who could sing this son as well as Tom Chaplin does. The chorus is beautiful and intricate. Tom's vocals soar and perform the melody like hand-in-glove. Very few songwriters are able to take you on a rollercoaster of notes this varied (up and down, up and known, way up and up even higher), and so perfectly in tune with one another. Tom reaches the high notes with passion and ease. This is one of the songs that shows the "confidence" I talk about at the beginning of my review. To give you a sneak peak, the song ends, "Because if you don't need me, I don't need you". A Keane signature song, completely.
5- A Bad Dream (8/10)
E.L.O dream! Great song with strong melody, a deliciously bittersweet melancholy in the forefront, and a fresh overall bouquet and aftertaste. It one of the slower, easier-paced songs in the album.
6- Hamburg Song (10/10)
Radiohead meets The Beatles meets Rufus Wainwright meets A-ha, yet truly original, with a lyric that effortlessly expresses human relationships' complexities and one's own insecurities. The song features Tom singing with a simple church organ-sounding keyboard that gives the tune a psalm-like feel. Towards the middle of the song, piano is added to make the song more endearing and complete. Very beautiful.
7- Put It Behind You (6/10)
A song full of light! "Almost" totally fun --- especially for Keane's standards. Like advice from a good friend who is determined to make you feel better, the song's lyric gives you hope and makes you feel loved. I also enjoy the subtle 60's/psycholdelica feel that the production gives this song. However, it is my least favorite track. Perhaps the slightly rough vocals don't do it for me, or the melody is too straightforward "rock" sounding for my taste.
8- Crystal Ball (10+/10)
May be the sweetest point in the album. As sweet and innocent as O.M.D. in the mid
to late eighties, with an added mystique to it, and of course Keane's signature. A joy
to listen to. One of my two favorites. The melody is so delicious and upbeat, it gets
to my spine every time I hear it!
*** Everyone I have played this album to, LOVES this song almost instantly.
9- Try Again (8/10)
Picture Muse with an injection of anti-bitterness and anti-anger, in an original Keane package. Another slower song, with a deep message. If you know the album "Hunting High and Low" by the Norwegian trio previously mentioned, you will realize this song could have been there.
10- Broken Toy (9/10)
The melody makes you feel like a boy who is growing up in a fantasy world, but listen to the lyrics and you will feel another more mature thing. At times the song sounds like Queen, but without the drama. The melody also has hints of bluegrass. I could see parts of the melody being an Indigo Girls tune. The production and sound mix are very unique: electronic almost waltz-like (swing back and forth) drum and base beat, mystical, and atmospheric.
11- The Frog Prince (10+/10)
What a way to end the album! This song is heavenly beautiful. If you strip away the production, you can picture John Lennon and/or Paul McCartney singing this song at their best during The Beatles period, with an added bonus of maturity and sophistication. The lyric is beautiful (I keep using the word, but can't use another word.) "An old fairytale told me, the simple heart will be prized again, a toad will be our king, and ugly ogres our heroes. Then you'll shake your fist at the sky, oh why did I rely on fashions and small fry?" The mandolin-sounding keyboards towards the end of the song give a perfect effect and mix greatly with the rest of the semi-distorted instruments. One of my two favorites in the album, and one of the most beautiful songs I have heard in recent years.
Description of Under the Iron Sea
"Under The Iron Sea" was recorded at The Magic Shop in Soho, New York, and back at Helioscentric Studios, near Battle.In making this record we tried to confront all our worst fears, to ruthlessly scrutinise ourselves, our relationship with each other, with other people, and with the world at large, and to make a journey into the darkest places we could find.
It made for an incredibly intense atmosphere during the writing and recording of the album, and the resultant songs and sounds very much reflect that. In the songs we created a kind of sinister fairytale-world-gone-wrong, a feeling of confusion and numbness represented by a dark place under an impenetrable iron sea. To express all this we created entirely new sounds by putting an old electric piano and various analogue synths through many different combinations of vintage guitar effects pedals, creating soundscapes that range from the percussive to vast oppressive walls of distortion.
We were writing, singing and performing with a drive, intensity and fury that is almost unrecognisable from our previous music.
It was important that this album had a strong visual presence too, and the start of that was the collaboration with Irvine Welsh on ¡®Atlantic¡¯ offered somebody who both inspired us, and found his own inspiration in our music.
His resulting film echoes the importance of that visual identity we strove for.
We wrote Under The Iron Sea because we needed a record that was going to make us feel alive again.
If U2 hadn't already released a pair of career retrospective discs, this British trio's second album would neatly do the trick in one. Not much of a surprise since Keane spent a good deal of time supporting Bono and company following the release their breakthrough debut, Hopes and Fears. From the melancholic "Crystal Ball" to the sinisterly beautiful "Is It Any Wonder?" (a blatant homage to "Zoo Station"), Keane have perfected their forebear's dark stadium-rock formula on their second album, all the more miraculous considering it was once again done without guitars. If Under the Iron Sea sounds considerably edgier than its predecessor, that's because it was recorded while the band was on the verge of splitting. But the friction has also given Keane a renewed sense of purpose, breaking the mid-tempo monotony with vibrant material such as "Nothing in My Way" and "Try Again": soaring songs that make the band sound unsinkable. --Aidin Vaziri
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