The V Festival interview: Keane

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This summer will, for many, be remembered as The Summer of Keane. When three boys from Battle leapt into the mainstream with cautious bravado and beautiful melodies. They never intended to set alight the genre boundaries of modern music, but nevertheless their debut, 'Hopes And Fears', sold several hundred thousand copies its first month, and Keane quickly filled the void left by Coldplay's vacation to the studio. It's a record that grows with every listen, and more importantly, it's a record of songs - the kind you can play round a campfire (if you have a portable piano). Given that, Keane's stay looks like being a lengthy and welcome one and it probably won't be long until they're higher up the bill for the big summer events. In the lead up to their V Festival slot, we catch up with the band and try to uncover their own hope and fears.

Virtual Festivals: After your tremendous mid-afternoon Glasto set, anything else must seem like a Barfly gig?
Tom: At some gigs, you're much more nervous and it's not due to the amount of people or whatever, it's just difficult to explain. Glastonbury is one of the biggest gigs that a band can play in their entire career, so we were incredibly nervous before that, but having done it, it gives you the confidence coming into something like this, that you've already experienced something like that. I guess that helps us out.

VF: In a kind of complimentary way the band hasn't changed much since you were playing Dublin castle gigs.. How does the reality of that compare to what you thought it would be?
Tim: It is pretty surreal what's happened but, at the same time I can't say we're really disillusioned with it all; that it hasn't been as good as we expected and we were expecting it to be all very bling.

VF: Are you afraid?
Tim: I think what we have on our side is that our music relates and kind of reaches out to people, and as long as it keeps doing that we remain honest and true to ourselves

VF: What happens when you run out of fucked up relationships? You run out of songs then don't you?
Tim: I love bands that write music that are a bit older (30-40), whatever it is, and they're still writing about 'you know what its like snogging a girl the first time' and I always find that a bit weird, and it's nice that bands develop the things they write about. When we get to make another album I'm sure there's going to be plenty of songs about fucked up relationships 'cause you know unfortunately they're always around. I hope we can write about other stuff as well, it would be crazy to think there isn't stuff to write about. Life is so full of weird stuff you only have to look around you to find inspiration.

VF: Coldplay make a whole profession out of trading off their charity work and Elbow came on stage this weekend with a big anti-mine flag. Where do you stand? Politics is politics, music is music?
Tom: That's the way I feel about it (politics is politics, music is music) and I don't really know very much about politics. I really don't think we feel, as a band there's a place for politics just because we don't really know what we're talking about if we're going on. At the same time it is admirable when people stand up for things that they believe in.

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