Keane - Sheffield Winter Gardens - 19/11/13

After 4 consecutive number one albums. sales topping the 10 million mark and a string of awards it must be a novelty and quite humbling to be playing to a couple of hundred people in Sheffield’s Winter Gardens. 16 years together mean the band are a well oiled machine, but even on the odd occasion when something went slightly wrong they used it as a way to indulge in banter with the audience who ranged from hyper active teenagers girls to pensioners. Keane are currently promoting their greatest hits album, and packed many of them into this 45 minute set. It’s easy to forget just how many hit singles they have achieved over the last 10 years. This very intimate gig demonstrated just how strong their debut album Hopes & Fears was which was seven years in the making, a lot of the set, and the biggest sing-a-longs of the evening were from this debut. Given their impressive back catalogue it would have been easy for them just to play the radio friendly stuff, but instead they decided to throw in a cover of David Bowie’s Life on Mars which worked really well with Tom’s vocal range. There were times when I felt sorry for the drummer Richard Hughes given the intimacy of the gig there wasn’t room for a full size drum kit, not without uprooting some of the plants anyway! So he was a little redundant, left to play percussion throughout. I was tempted not to mention Lily Allen in this interview, who is currently at No2 with their song Somewhere Only We Know the band joked that they had received payment for the songs usage in this years John Lewis ad, with a £20 gift voucher. With false rumours this month about the band splitting it was quite evident this evening that they are still enjoying performing together, either that or they are very good actors…the night concluded an encore of bedshapped and Crystal Ball. Tom Chaplin stated recently that the band are intending to take a break so this tiny gig in a very cold Sheffield was the band winding down and thankfully not calling it a day. The band get a lot of criticism for being bland and dull, but as all the accolades and album sales must count for something. Here’s to the next decade of the band making music!