Gig review: Keane at First Direct Arena, Leeds

“Happy birthday, Hopes and Fears,” Keane frontman Tom Chaplin muses. Before him, spilling from the floor to the rafters, a sold-out First Direct Arena crowd whoops in celebration. The singer shakes his head, as if in disbelief. “This is just insane,” he continues. “Twenty years on, and it’s still doing this for us.”

The East Sussex quartet are a long way from their early days now. Birthed from the post-Britpop boom that saw a slew of British bands burnish the upper echelons of the charts with their floppy fringes and widescreen ballads, they occupy that rarefied air of the few who proved themselves more than one-trick ponies; like peers Coldplay and Snow Patrol, they have thrived rather than just survived in the present.

Still, like many others, the lasting power of their debut is a legacy that has outstripped nearly all else in their catalogue, once associated with Woolworths front-of-counter ubiquity.

Here, on a nationwide arena tour that starts in Leeds, there is seemingly a tacit admission they never hit those heights again; played in full for its 20th anniversary, the group thread a dozen tracks throughout the rest of their oeuvre, a career-spanning performance that works hard to remind all there is more to them than just two-decade-old piano anthems.

Several of those cuts are secretly some of their best; The Way I Feel, from 2019’s Cause and Effect, finds Chaplin channelling his inner Brandon Flowers, all retro-gloss synths and heartland rock rhythms, while Spiralling offers an outrageously danceable groove that practically bursts off a minimalist T-shaped pop stage draped in boxy white lights and screens.

But it is the early stuff that naturally draws the biggest cheers of the night; the swooning appeal of Can’t Stop Now, the keening lines behind Everybody’s Changing and the wistful melancholy of She Has No Time are all rapturously received throughout.

At points, it can feel a little underpowered; with just Tim Rice-Oxley’s piano and the rhythm section of Richard Hughes and Jesse Quin on stage, the heft needed to fully realise such songs feels either conspicuously absent or mysteriously apparent. But such concerns are swept away when Somewhere Only We Know – resurgent in its status as a Gen-Z anthem – brings all to their feet.

“To be doing this… thank you,” Chaplin bows before a climactic Sovereign Light Cafe and Bedshaped. The next 20 years seem safely assured too.