Under The Iron Sea

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 opinionI 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 midto late eighties, with an added mystique to it, and of course Keane's signature. A joyto listen to. One of my two favorites. The melody is so delicious and upbeat, it getsto 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.

Some bands consolidate upon their successes and build even further, while others find a great deal of anxiety and frustration in success, not finding that it meets their hopes and dreams. Keane is one of the second kind of bands, whose sophomore album, rather than reflecting success and encouragement. The album was successful, going to #1 in the United Kingdom and selling more than three million copies worldwide, but it was about half of the first album’s sales, and the album was full of dissatisfaction in the friendship between the band’s lead songwriter and the band’s lead singer, a dynamic that would continue throughout the band’s body of work as a whole. Not only is this album rather melancholy about romantic love, but even friendship is threatened by success and by personal demons. Now, for a track-by-track review:Atlantic – This particular song is a gloomy and ethereal reflection on fear and aging and loneliness and the desire of a loved one to help life be more pleasant. One of the most touching aspects of this song, for me, is the way the song ends on an unresolved chord, reflecting the unresolved nature of the narrator’s longing.Is It Any Wonder? – This song, a relatively successful single off of the album, features a distorted piano, and gloomily reflects upon exhaustion and frustration. The song has architectural referents, as well as commenting that love in our times and situations is something known only from children’s rhymes, which seems all too true.Nothing In My Way – This is a song about divided lovers, reflecting on divorce or breaking up, problems setting and respecting boundaries, and putting on a false front of cheer to hide feeling dismal and despondent. The song’s title is deeply ironic, reflecting the deception of appearing to be happy when one is deeply troubled.Leaving So Soon? – This sad song, which is reflecting on a troubled friendship or relationship of some kind, comments on the sad fate of someone opening up about themselves, and seeing to one’s sadness that others find it too much to take, and quickly leave. The comparison of a friendship or relationship with plants is notable here.A Bad Dream – This dark and melancholy song was a moderately successful single in the United Kingdom especially, and it reflects on death, the loss of friendships, and the feeling that someone has become the sort of person one was born to hate. It is the sensation of waking up from tormented sleep only to realize that one’s day-to-day existence is a torment as well.Hamburg Song – This song, which is an organ ballad, is a reflection on a desire for friendship and the feeling that one’s generosity is taken advantage of because one is diffident and relatively undemanding. It is a song full of longing and suffering, and is a beautiful song despite its deep mood of sadness.Put It Behind You – This song, is yet another breakup sort of song, where the narrator seems to parody the sort of lame self-help clichés that tend to be used to cheer people up in such a situation. The song urges people to do what is best for them, but that is precisely the sort of problem many of us face in life, not being able to do that or sometimes even to know what is best for us.The Iron Sea – This is the sort of song that a band puts in an album as Grammy bait in order to attempt to snag a nomination for best rock instrumental. This song, coming in at almost 3:30, would have been worthy of such a nomination, as its spooky and menacing feeling compliments the album well.Crystal Ball – This song is an up-tempo but downbeat song about the search for something to tell us who we are, when all we see is our despondent and catatonic state, no matter whether we try to fall on the earth or call upon God in heaven. The song appears to be about feeling lost and seeking salvation, not only in an ultimate sense, but in the sense of present overwhelming troubles.Try Again – This song, like “Put It Behind You,” is an attempt to move forward and recover what was lost in a troubled relationship. It speaks of dysfunctional fighting, about being so exhausted that one falls asleep on the train, and about not wanting to see people who bring us suffering but feeling compelled to try again anyway.Broken Toy – This is a song that, like “Is It Any Wonder?” appears to reflect on childhood, as the narrator feelings like a broken toy. It is a sad and spare ballad, and seems to hint at a darker undertone to the gloominess of the album as a whole.The Frog Prince – Yet another song that uses a childlike and dreamlike image to reflect a reality, this is a song about the isolation and ruin that result from putting on an image of coolness and having the hollow reality become evident to others. The song reflects a longing for innocence, for transparency, and for a lack of faith that such qualities are to be found to a great degree in our contemporary society.Unlike the attempt to balance out hopes and fears in their previous album, here Keane seems to succumb to despair in their sophomore album. Over and over again the songs reflect loneliness, isolation, torment, and the breakup of relationships, and the fear of reality. The songs point back to a time of lost innocence that seems forever beyond recovery, and the façade that is placed to cover one’s insecurities and vulnerabilities appears like an iron sea that imprisons the tender heart beneath. If one wished to dig even deeper into the album, this song seems to reflect a far deeper trauma than the usual suffering of broken relationships and fickle friends, but suggests a far more disturbing root of the complicated tangle of problems that lie beneath this album’s melancholy material. The fact that this album was my favorite album of 2006, the year my father died, and that it still to this day reflects my own mood and concerns and issues is something I find rather disconcerting, but so it is.

The first time I heard Keane was on the radio when I was 14. I was into a lot of pop rock and rock music and I really couldn't like the sound of the slow and mellow piano driven songs from Hopes and fears. When I was 16 the band released the single Is it any wonder. I wasn't a huge fan of the song but I did really like the more rock sound with a pounding chorus and gripping lyrics. It was the 1st thing which initially attracted me to the band. By that time my musical tastes had progressed but I definitely wasn't ready for the piano tunes. Then later when Crystal Ball was released, which is still my favourite Keane song, I bought the single and this was a song which really grabbed my attention. I loved the sound of the whole song and especially the chorus which seems to run and keep going. I could and I'm sure always will, be able to relate to it. At the time I certainly wasn't going to purchase the album though. So a couple of years later I started listening to Crystal ball again after it had been left within the stack of my CD collection and I really enjoyed it again. It was hard not to notice it because it sticks out so much with that weird white biodegradable case. So by that point I had discovered Amazon and I thought that one day in the future I might buy the album. So it was early September 2009 by the time I was possessed to purchase it. I bought the deluxe version because it was the best deal and I am very happy I did. I wasn't a Keane fan before buying but now I'm definitely a Keane fan!On my first listen of the album I was captivated. It turned out sounding much better than I expected and I think the album is a complete masterpiece. It's easily Keane's best work, and a welcome change to the more simple piano sound of the previous album. The distortion sounds and effects are amazing and that's why this album is so beautiful. Every song is so great. The album kicks of with Atlantic which is a sounds cape unlike any other and lasts for over 4 minutes, like most of the songs on the album. It is so hauntingly beautiful and really captures the themes of loneliness and being lost. The second half of the song has a different sound to the 1st half but it's altogether amazing. Is it any wonder was the 1st single and it's a catchy hit that really sums up what this album represents. Easily likeable. Nothing in my way has a more simple piano sound and the chorus is upbeat rather than the verse. The drum part on Leaving so soon is pretty rad and it's one of those parts that Richard was probably talking about that Tim invents. Bad dream is one of my favourites and has an amazing sound. It's all fairly the same tempo and its melancholy is thrilling. The middle8 has a real taste of the distorted piano scope.Hamburg song is slow and sounds like it uses organ. It's truly beautiful sounding though. Put it behind you is one of my favourites and has such a catchy rhythm. Inspiring! The iron sea is scintillatingly haunting but beautiful. Incredible sound. Try again is similar to Hamburg song and one that Tom loves. Broken toy is so different and has this great intro and outro with spooky vocal sounds. Hauntingly mesmerising. The frog prince is our bonus on the deluxe edition and it's worth it. It's a more simple sound but so likeable. A song about a downfall of a king which really implants itself in your memory. It's a nice ending and the outro uses intelligent guitar and what sounds like distorted and non distorted piano.The DVD portion of the album is definitely worth it for the `making of' feature alone. It's great to have an insight into the bands thoughts about the album and what they were setting out to do this time around. There are also some great bits of the band in the recording studio. It's really interesting. Seeing the band over the world in New York and back in Britain recording the songs and enjoying themselves is fantastic. It gives you a look into how the songs are written and the whole ideas on the album, with the development from Hopes and fears. The band talks about how they're feeling at that time in this world and they chat about different songs and their meanings. There's a part where the cameraman is recording Tim on piano creating what went on to become Under the iron sea. There is a short film for Atlantic which is set on a beach and features a bunch of weirdo's and freaks. Really creepy.This was the 1st time I had seen the video for Is it any wonder? I couldn't listen to the music because you are concentrating on the camera looping around so much that it makes you feel sick! There's also a 'making of' for the video and shows the guy who came up with the insane idea. There are a lot of demos featured and some fantastic live videos from Chicago. They are amazing live and sound so good here. Tom's voice sounds exactly the same as it does in the studio recordings. There's a gallery of the boys in the studio and there's also wallpapers which you can use on your PC. The DVD is well worth it if you're interested in the band.The album is incredible and deserves a listen even if you're not a fan of Keane. The book style packaging is great with some amazing artwork.

I remember buying this album back in 2006 when it was released without listening to a single track as Keane are probably the only band for me where I know that I will love every song on every album and Under The Iron Sea is no different for me. I have been a huge fan of Keane since they first started and played a number of support gigs to Travis.It astounds me that people do not like this band because there seen as "UNCOOL" as they don't have the rocky coolness I mean what a load of crap not to like a band regardless of music just because there seen as "UNCOOL" even though they produce amazing albums where every song could be a single.Yes this album does have a darker edge to it but it's up there for me with all the rest of there great album's there music is also great driving music too!Again shame on you if you rated the album 3 stars or lower! Your wrong in a big way!

Errr, Amazon, one tends to use CDs to listen to, otherwise if crap as bird scarers... In this case the problem you'll have is not wearing it out by listening repeatedly. What a class album! 🎶🎵💕

I'm not a Keane super fan, but I have found this to be a really great album. There are not many songs in my life that I've never got tired of listening to, and this album has 4 or 5 of them. It is a shame they have/had an "uncool" image as it would be a shame if people were not aware of or put off giving this album in particular a go. I seem to like different songs on the album compared to others - in truth I remember hearing the "Is It Any Wonder" single and thinking Keane wasn't for me, but luckily heard some other songs by chance. No music is for everyone and I've some banter/teasing about saying I like the album, but I don't care! It is just nice to find something you think has moments of magic and to enjoy it.

The dvd contains some live stuff and demos also music vids and interviews.most of us will be satisfied by the cd alone.I saw them live recently and must say that they were not too bad at all.I think that i must be going off them a bit as of late and some people say that the 3rd album was a strain with things being a bit same same.Will there be a 4th album?Being an early 80's man this is not too bad an album for the post millenium newer bands.A good follow on from the first album.