I don't want to call Keane's Silenced By The Night a return to form, since they've always been brilliant, but there's certainly that air of zeitgeist to the song that seems to resound with the sense of the 'return'. Its chorus is triumphant, soaring, anthemic in all the ways Keane's best songs are, and it also manages to deftly combine the clinical piano lines and pop ethos of Hopes & Fears with the touches of 80s flair that has so dominated their more recent work. It's a bringing together of the many various parts of Keane into a new, magnificent work that feels so wonderfully 'them'. We're glad you're back guys.
Silenced By The Night is released on the 30th April.
Keane - even in 30 second teaser clip form, they deliver. This snippet of new single Silenced By The Night might not be much, but it offers a glimmer of long awaited new material, a hint of the direction the band will be taking for their eagerly anticipated new album.
On first impressions, it feels like a firm reassertion of the Perfect Symmetry sound - so close in fact that it sounds like it could be off said album. Eschewing the beat-inflected flavours of the night train EP, it's good to see Keane heading back towards the territory they do best; big solid piano tunes. The debt to the 80s again rears its head here too, with the Ashes to Ashes era Bowie vibe coming across strongly as it did with the Perfect Symmetry singles.
All very promising signs, and we eaglery anticipate more!
What do you get when you add a stunning blonde, a Keane sample (amazing!) and Frankmusik (also amazing!) all together? Well, you end up with Colette Carr's new single (We Do It) Primo, that's what.
Hailing from Malibu, California (can we live there please? It sounds really sunny!), Colette is a feisty electro-popping rapper whose previous single Back It Up reached Number One on MTVMusic's Top 100 back at the start of 2010.
The closest thing I can really compare Primo to is Miley Cyrus's Party In The USA; it's got that same youthful exuberance, that real hands-in-the-air vibe. On one hand you have the glorious 'pop' of Colette's vocals and bouncy synths; on the other hand, a real urban credibility.
Artists like Jessie J have helped open the door wide open for quirky, forthright female artists to make it big and Primo is precisely the kind of track ready to take that opportunity and really make a go of it.
Of course, there's always a danger when sampling a song as popular as Keane's Somewhere Only We Know that it could alienate fans of the original - but Primo cleverly only uses the briefest of moments of the song, cherry-picking the catchiest hook of the chorus; a cornerstone that the rest of the song can launch from.
As for Colette herself, she's obviously got a keen sense of style too, presenting herself in some really eye-catching, glamorous outfits that match up to the striking, individual sounds on offer in her music. It's well worth checking out her rather amazing blog too, complete with smileys and a hell of a lot of pictures. Very colourful, super-bright, and like Primo itself, immensely fun.
