Customer Reviews

Night Train (Amazon MP3 Exclusive Version) [+Digital Booklet]

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(28)

 

 

So, you're a Keane fan are you? Well, I hope you haven't bought the new CD yet...if you have, I'm sorry. Keane's newest release is 8 songs long, clocking in at a whopping 31 minutes. Sure, the Beatles albums were often short and no one would say they weren't great...and there have been recent memorable releases that have barely stretched a half hour...Paper Tigers by Caesars jumps right to mind. However, upon closer look and listen, this Keane CD falls very short of being called a classic. You can start with saying it's really a 7 song CD that clocks in at just under 30 minutes, as track 1, "House Lights", is a minute and 24 seconds of nothing. "Back In Time", which follows, is a good song, but nothing that will make you forget standout songs from past Keane CD's. When it's over, it's left your head. That's followed by the official single, "Stop For A Minute", which sounds extremely promising until guest rapper, K'Naan, sings lines like "Baby, you are just beautiful from your crown to your cuticles". Sadly, that gem might be one of the better lines and it makes me cringe every time I hear it. I'm certainly not against rap...even if it doesn't quite fit Keane's style...but I am against bad rap. The song "Clear Skies" follows, and it's easily the highlight of the CD. With hand claps and vivid lyrics, Keane makes you wonder if the ship has been righted and we're set for smooth sailing. But then "Ishin Denshin (You've Got To Help Yourself)" starts to play and you vomit a little in your mouth. I don't know what guest vocalist Tigarah is singing in Japanese, but if it's as syrupy sweet as the English lyrics, I don't want to know. I skip this song more than any other on the CD, which is saying a lot. Next up is "Your Love"...another song which makes you think things are headed in the right direction. "Looking Back", another song with guest vocalist K'Naan, follows and it's not much better than the first he guested on. Lines like "hard to separate my past from a rhyme, cause how could you separate milk from lime" will leave you scratching your head. Instead of thinking things are going to get better, you start to wonder if this Canadian singer/rapper has some incriminating photos of the guys in the band? Or maybe this is some cruel joke? Did Keane have to finish out a contract? Finally, mercilessly, the CD ends with "My Shadow"...which ends the CD on a decent note...if you didn't pop it out of your CD player before then.

Bottom line...if you're a big Keane fan, I highly recommend you stay away from this CD, or else you may be scarred for life. If you feel you must own some new music from Keane, definitely download "Your Love" and "Clear Skies". And if you can get an edited version of "Stop For A Minute", minus the rap...go there too. Otherwise...pop Hopes & Fears, Under The Iron Sea, or even Perfect Symmetry into your CD player...you'll be much happier you did.

For goodness sake, DO NOT download the whole album! Listen well to the samples and don't assume a song will get better than what you hear there. Then download probably two tracks and resign yourself to listening to Hopes and Fears or Under the Iron Sea again for a year or so more while you hope for better.

Imagine a whole album of the worst parts of Perfect Symmetry, and that's what Keane have delivered here.

When did Keane become an 80's pop band? When Keane first emerged with Hopes and Fears, they were unique and modern. Under The Iron Sea was an incredible follow-up album. After that, they released Perfect Symmetry which was half 80's pop and half beautiful modern music.

This album is unfortunately an extension of the 80's pop half of Perfect Symmetry. Between the cheesy synthesizer sounds and the electronic drums, this is just not the Keane I was looking forward to hearing. I hope their next album will be a step in a better direction, but I fear we've lost Keane to this new, yet out-dated style.

You're at the store holding Keane's latest CD in your hands. The album art is cool, the song titles catchy, the stickers on the front claim it's "a game changer," and some of the songs even feature other artists. You've liked Keane's stuff in the past, even if it has been a little all over the map as far as styles go. But so far everything seems to be telling you this will be a good CD.

Lies. Run. Just run away. Hide your cash and credit card in your wallet, then hide your wallet with your grandma, and make her promise not to buy you any CDs this holiday season, if only to make absolutely certain she doesn't accidentally purchase this one because it has cool album art, catchy titles and a sticker on the front saying nice things.

Others have said it in their reviews but I'll repeat the same frustrations here, only with bullets!
--There are only 8 songs on the CD, which sucks even more when you find out the first "song" is a 90 second instrumental waste of space
--Of the guest artists, one speaks Japanese the whole time so you can't understand her and the other uses lines like "Hard to separate my past from a rhyme, Cos how can you separate milk from lime"
--None of the songs are memorable enough to save the rest of the CD, and some repeat the same phrase over and over again, making it seem even more like this was (poorly) thrown together at the last second

Do you like Keane? Don't buy this CD. Do you not like Keane? Don't buy this CD.

Do you remember the last Star Wars movie of the original 3 that came out, and before the big space battle, the fish general says, "It's a trap!"? I did some research, and it turns out he was referring to one of his staff asking if he should buy Keane's new CD "Night Train" and not the Galactic Empire knowing they were coming to attack (it was coincidence that the Empire did in fact know they were coming). SERIOUSLY THOUGH. I don't have time to deal with this EP vs LP stuff. I go to the store. I pay as much for this CD as I do for every other CD I buy. I should get the same quality for my money, right? WELL I DON'T. Keane snuck into my wallet with their decent song history and all I got for it was a bad rash inside my ears and arthritis in my joints from forever hitting the "Next" button throughout the CD in the hopes that a song worth listening to on it exists.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not mad. Okay I'm mad, pissed even. But I'm not pissed. Oh wait. Picture this: you're a music artist! And not someone in a basement, you have several CDs, a few hit songs, most people even know your name. Your band puts together 8 "tracks" that consist of an intro with no vocals and lasts a minute and a half, a featured rap artist that talks about being beautiful from your crown to your cuticles and separating milk from lime, a featured Japanese artist that never speaks English during her song so you have no clue what's going on, Keane using THE SAME 3 LINES FOR AN ENTIRE SONG, a song that steals the theme from Rocky, then burns it to a disc and calls it a CD worth asking the public money for. Can you guess what band and CD you are?

Are there some okay songs you can listen to more than once? Yes. Are they worth buying the CD for? Not unless you want an excuse to get all riled up on a Wednesday night and break out your digital pitchfork and torch on amazon's review section. I have loved most of Keane's music in the past. Nothing is ever perfect, but there was enough balance with experimenting and sticking with what they already did well that the CDs were worthwhile. If the experimenting in their other CDs was the equivalent of adjusting the amount of food a mouse in a cage gets every few days by a small percent, then this CD was dousing the mouse in gamma radiation, testing makeup on it, painting it's fur leopard print, renaming it to Lothar, giving it only sushi to eat and demanding it has until Tuseday to learn to play Beethoven's 9th ...or else. TOO MUCH EXPERIMENTING KEANE, TOO MUCH! And now look at the monster that you've created...stealing the Rocky theme, using the same 3 lines for a whole song, shame on you...

This EP is worthless. They don't even try here. The one song that was actually good on this album was released on the iTunes and Japanese edition of Perfect Symmetry (My Shadow). The rest of it is made up of filler, j-pop, rap remixes, and to cap it off they ripped off the theme song to the Rocky movies. But let's go through each song individually to pinpoint the problems.

1. House Of Lights: This is complete filler put in just to get the EP above 30 minutes in running time. I have to say though that between the .40 second mark until the end it had what could have been a great buildup to an epic song. Instead they fade it out at the 1.23 mark and go on to the only Keane song that is actually new.

2. Back In Time: New however doesn't mean good. This sounds more like a rejected song from Perfect Symmetry than something completely original. He also says the same line over, and over, and over, and over.... ad nauseam. Add to it completely forgettable lyrics and a horrible grating synth and you realize it should have been thrown in the trash never to be heard from.

3. Stop For A Minute: The big single. The song that supposedly 'modernizes' the band. The song that made a total of 12 teenage girls wet their panties when they first heard it on Radio Disney. The same girls who are now telling the old fans to just 'get over it' and accept this 'new' direction. It isn't even a FEAT: K'naan song. It's more like a rapper trying to show his soft side by letting Keane in to explain the wussy parts he'd rather not rap. Yes the song is catchy but so is 'Banana Phone' and we don't laud praises over it's rhythmic quality.

4. Clear Skies: This song just doesn't belong. It belongs on the back half of the fan album of Keane, 'Little Broken Words'. It sounds like their work from the late 90's to early 2000's. This isn't new or different. Just a retread of the stuff that failed to become popular before Dominic Scott left the band.

5. Ishin Denshin (You've Got To Help Yourself): I don't get it. What is a Japanese singer doing on a Keane album in the first place? And she doesn't even sing in English? Then you've got an annoying chorus that Tom sings which is mind-numbingly boring and insipid. What is the point? It almost feels like a cross-promotional song that wants people in the UK and America to know who Tigarah is and bought off Keane to include this song with a edited in chorus by Keane to make it look like it was their idea.

6. Your Love: This isn't even sung by Tom. I don't know who this is but it sure isn't the voice of Keane. Maybe they think people won't notice if they squeeze it in between the two worst songs on the EP? It isn't a bad song but I paid for a Keane EP to hear Keane not to hear someone who kind of sounds like them.

7. Looking Back: Oh, God. I didn't even remember how the Rocky theme went until this came on. Were they really that lazy that they couldn't make even a half-hearted attempt at creating music? They had to steal from the Rocky theme? Add that to the goddamned rapping remix K'naan did to the it and this is an absolute disaster of a song.

8. My Shadow: Thank you! Thank you! Finally a Keane song that actually resembles Keane! It doesn't matter though as I said at the beginning this song came out on the iTunes edition so this isn't even new. Still if it weren't on this wretched excuse for an EP, I believe this song could have been compared to (I believe) their best song ever 'Fly To Me'.

So really you got 6 new songs. 1 sung in Japanese. Two rap remixes by a bad rapper. 1 song that isn't even sung by Keane. 1 rehash of their beginning work and a rejected synth-pop song from Perfect Symmetry. Hope you enjoyed your attempt at experimentation Keane! This is one fan who is never buying another album from you until you finally listen to the fans who got you where you are in the first place!

I bought this album when it came out, and I have listened to it in my car several times. My initial judgement was that this album was not so good. Now I think that most agree that Keane albums have gotten less satisfactory with fans as time went by. I personally like this album much better that their previous album Perfect Symmetry. This album(ep) is short and it has addicting hooks to it. It has a Japanese guest singer while Keane is doing a bit of that 8bit rock. It has some hip hop it. It has some 80's New Wave. It is a bit all over the place, but I would not consider it a bad album. Now here is the thing. After listening to this album numerous time I came to the conclusion that this new Keane we have been listening to since Perfect Symmetry is the real them. Night Train continues in the direction of the 80's pop that might be a nuisance to many, but the the truth is that they do this very good. Night Train made me recall about a fact about Keane that some people don't know. Before their debut album Hopes and Fears came out all their demos where more electronic in nature and less piano driven than what is shown in their first album. In the inception of the group the lead singer played acoustic guitar and you can hear their influences of bands such as Pet Shop Boys and other 80's synth band. Night Train is nothing new. Matter a fact it's been in their hearts all along. We all have been accustomed of liking the formulated piano driven Keane rather than their retro pop side. Maybe we got the true Keane and we the fans do not want to accept it. That being said I do believe that they have to calm the retro pop a bit in the future. The reason is because the first two albums is a style that in uniquely theirs. The retro pop is something that will be compared to by many other bands that do it better than Keane. I also want to add that their seems to be a fourth unofficial Keane member on this album and also when they play on stage. I think that their creative force was more potent within the three of them. Kinda like a Genesis thing. It might be a small point, but I feel it's worth noting.
Unfortunately, I noticed that you can get the Night Train album cheaper now. So give it chance if you are a true Keane fan. If you are iffy about the band, than stay safely with the two first albums.

I thought Keane will reach greatness ala Coldplay or Radiohead after two albums but they instead fell into a pit. This is their worst work to date. Nothing worth listening to or even any standout single in this crap. Save your money. If you must buy one Keane CD, get the 1st one (Hopes and Fears) which I think is a classic. Every song is worth listening to.

I have never written a review on Amazon until now. Lord have mercy! Where did my boys go?? This jumbled up mess has traumatized me. Keane is by far one of the best bands to come out in the past decade but much like others on here, I feel their albums have progressively become worse.

I, too am all about artists evolving but not so far that the original art has been lost. Artists depend on their fans, and their is a reason Keane became famous but this album clearly lacks any trace of that reason.

Keane, please return back to the powerful all encompassing melodic dream music that made you so famous to begin with...

"Night Train" is an 8 track EP by UK trio Keane and finds them continuing along the experimental path their last album "Perfect Symetry" took them.

"House lights" is a brief instrumental with electronic flourishes, followed by the catchy upbeat "Back in time". The lads worked with Somali/Canadian rapper K'naan resulting in "Stop for a minute" (which sounds like a Coldplay/Jay-Z collaboration), and the absolutely lovely "Looking back" (with a triumphant horn section, it samples the "Rocky" theme).

"Clear skies" is clap-filled guitar Pop, "Ishin denshin (You've got to help yourself)" is upbeat synth Pop featuring the vocals of Japanese artist Tigarah in the verses, while the synth driven "Your love" wouldn't sound out of place on a New Order or Depeche Mode album. It features a rare vocal performance from Tim Rice-Oxley. Closing is "My shadow", a classic Keane piano ballad with yearning choir boy vocals that swells to Stadium-esque proportions.

Some will hate that there is less piano Pop, more synths and even rap these days in Keane's sound and that's perfectly fine, but those willing to let an act experiment or evolve will enjoy the ride. My only complaint is it's all over too soon, but it is after all an EP.