It’s been 4 years in the making but now Keane are finally
ready to release their fifth album Strangeland.
Having first found success eight years ago the band has battled through singer
Tom Chaplin’s early drug problems whilst consistently producing number 1
albums. Newest member Jessie Quin spoke to us about his favourite track on the
latest album and fitting into an already established band.
What’s your favourite
track on the new album?
Oh that’s a tricky one, I think my favourite track is Black Rain. It’s a bit of a weird one,
we nearly didn’t put it on the album actually, it’s very dark and ominous. It’s
one of the ones that we finished later in the album because the ones that you
have been working on the most you sort off….well you want to hear something new
after a while. To everyone else it’s a new album but we have been working on it
for 4 years.
You weren’t keen on
giving yourself any deadlines for this album, how did that help the process?
I think the most important thing was getting the songs right
before we started recording. Poor Tim (Rice-Oxley) basically worked his socks
off until he had written 100 songs or something, until we felt there was definitely
everything that we needed. But when we actually went into the studio it took us
a year to record it. We just wanted to make something that was absolutely brilliant.
It’s very easy to say we wanted to make the best album we
could, lots of people say that, but to make an album that you really love yourself
and want to listen to is actually quite a rare thing. It’s often the case for a
lot of bands going in that first you do the drums, then you do the bass and
guitars or whatever and you are just ticking boxes but to make something that
you are really engaged with and really love takes time. But I think it’s paid
off.
How do you know when
a songs finished and not to keep adding more sounds to it?
That’s a very good question as you can go on tinkering
forever really. I think Brian Wilson took 20 years or something to finish Smile. I think a big part of it is
making sure it’s going in the right direction in the first place. We rehearsed
the songs before we recorded them and worked out different ways of playing
them. There are a couple of songs, one song in particular that isn’t on the
album in any way which is called Higher Than
the Sun which is absolutely brilliant but we didn’t feel like we captured
it properly yet so we will go on tinkering with it. The rest of the time I
guess you just reach a point where if everyone thinks it sounds brilliant and
no ones got any more ideas to try then you have to just put it to bed.
