Keane - Brixton Academy Tuesday 16th November 2004 reviewed by Cars

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After bagging ourselves seats behind Keane's family & friends we had high hopes of who the support band might be. My friend saw them earlier in the year & Thirteen Senses were with them which would've suited me down to the ground. So I admit to feeling a tinge of disappointment when a bloke called David Ford appeared onstage. Who? Who indeed - no idea, though he certainly entertained me for the 4 or 5 songs he did. Pretty witty in between songs & doing a suprisingly good version of Young Hearts Run Free (yes the disco song) with just him & the piano. It's hard to describe his set. A couple of tracks were just him & his guitar which were good protest type songs. He also did a very clever track where he played every instrument onstage for 3 seconds then walked away with the backing track still playing it. You really had to be there! My friend was for some reason absolutely outraged by this & him in general I think but he gets the thumbs up from me whoever he is! Next up was someone I had heard of though not actually heard - Brendan Benson & quite honestly I would have prefered to have stayed in ignorance. He played a far too long set of songs all sounding the same whilst sporting an alarming Pringle jumper. No the Benson! So onto the main act. I wasn't particularly bothered about being in the seats, in fact thinking that you could still enjoy Keane if Brixton had provided beds & Horlicks. A band I liked very much but could never imagine working up any kind of excitement onstage. My friend who was lucky enough to have seen Thirteen Senses & not Brendan Benson had insisted throughout the day that they "go mad" onstage & were really lively. I didn't beleve him & I was wrong! They kicked off with Can't Stop Now, then onto the excellent Everybody's Changing. I was actually concerned Tim (the piano player) may have been wired up to the mains he was rocking about so much. Tom was engaging & had the crowd in the palm of his hand throughout. As well as the majority of their album they played a couple of b-sides (the brilliant Snowed Under being one of them), a couple of new tracks & an old song which I can't remember the title of. Highlights were of course Everybody's Changing, We Might As Well Be Strangers, Bend & Break, This Is The Last Time & naturally the show closer of the main set Somewhere Only We Know. They finished off with Bedshaped being the last song of the encore & I was absolutely blown away by the whole thing. With the exception of one other band I have never been to a gig where the singer sounded better live than in the studio. Tom was not only singing brilliantly but his gratitude to the crowd & obvious enthusiasm made this one of the best gigs I've ever been to. They were breathtaking. 10 out of 10

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