Keane, Edinburgh review - 'lyricism tempered by real-life pain'

“Pound for pound you’re the loudest audience in the world,” said Keane’s singer Tom Chaplin, miming being blown backwards by the wave of noise from the crowd. Every other band says this when they come to Scotland, of course, but later Chaplin on went to explain at length just why Edinburgh is such a special city to him.

He attended the University of Edinburgh, he said, before dropping out to pursue a career in music (an early career path which mirrors that of Mumford & Sons’ Marcus Mumford). In one sense he described this as a period of “abject failure”, but it left him with a great and lasting admiration for the “special city” of Edinburgh, and was an important step upon the journey to Keane coming into existence.

That’s partly why the band booked this special club show, as Chaplin described it, although in fairness this large hall is certainly far smaller than the arenas and festival fields they’ve been playing this year. The band’s other reason for playing Edinburgh was as a partial apology for not including Scotland on their most recent tour (a Glasgow date is also upcoming).

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Keane’s debut album Hopes and Fears, and there’s a certain irony to this, because it contains the blandest, most John Lewis-soundtracking examples of the group’s output. Familiarity breeds enthusiasm though, and the platitudes of Everybody’s Changing, Somewhere Only We Know and the closing Bedshaped were greeted with big cheers.

Yet Keane became a far more interesting band once they passed this first flush of fame - like a sleek, anthemic Coldplay whose lyricism has been tempered by the real-life pain of Chaplin’s documented addiction troubles. Songs like Perfect Symmetry, the slick John Hughes bounce of Spiralling, the starkly reflective Neon River and Sovereign Light Café, and their last album’s stand-out The Way I Feel brought so much more life experience and depth of feeling than the music we were all here to celebrate.