Keane at L’Olympia, Paris (26 Apr ’24)

It was a very rare European gig for me as I headed off to the city of love with My Beloved Wife to see Keane, one of her favourite live acts, as they played L’Olympia in Paris, a venue I was especially thrilled to visit having been the site of eighteen days’ worth of Beatles shows in January/February 1964.

My ticket

We were in the company of our good mates Lee and Ali, with whom we’d seen the band on the previous time I’d witnessed them in action, fifteen year earlier.

It was an early start to the day, but we took advantage of one of the lounges in Manchester Airport before our flight.

L’Olympia

We then negotiated the lengthy ticket queue before getting the RER train to Châtelet-Les Halles and a very brief stroll to Rue Montorgueil, which we knew was lined with food shops and bars.

We easily met up with the others, proceeding to do a little bit of bar hopping down the street before checking in at our hotel.

We found somewhere to eat and then a nice bar round the corner (Bistro Neuf) from L’Olympia before heading into the venue.

L’Olympia first opened all the way back in 1893, with other famous acts to tread its boards including Édith Piaf, Jacques Brel, Grateful Dead and Jeff Buckley, who has a live album from this theatre that I don’t own.

The support act

I didn’t know if there would be a support act, but we noticed on the theatre frontage that The Sherlocks from South Yorkshire were also playing. They’re a band I knew the name of, but had never knowingly heard anything by, despite them being on album number four.

We only made it in for part of their set, with the venue already really packed for them. However, we managed to negotiate our way into a pretty decent spec, with Lee and Ali heading up to their seats in the mezzanine.

I think that the first song we caught was the title track to their 2017 debut LP Live For The Moment, which was very anthemic indie in a style that just doesn’t move me at all.

The Sherlocks

Next up was City Lights off 2021’s World I Understand which again suggests the influence of Arctic Monkeys, no doubt a very lazy reference due to their geographical proximity.

They closed with another tune off their first record, the rock-y Chasing Shadows, leaving me fairly underwhelmed, but much of the crowd seemingly well satiated.

Here’s that last number from this very show:

My history with the headliner

They were apparently known as The Lotus Eaters in the 1990’s – quite an odd choice given a Liverpool band with the same name had a top 20 hit with The First Picture Of You in August 1983. They then became Cherry Keane before shortening their moniker.

I was given Keane’s debut album Hopes And Fears by John, my old mate from university, in July 2005, for an unknown reason!

My Beloved Wife and I must have decided to go and see them at the then-Echo Arena in Liverpool in February 2009 (for £30.82 each) at some point in the previous year, as I got her the third LP Perfect Symmetry for Christmas 2008, while I picked up the second record (Under The Iron Sea) via Amazon the month before we saw them in person.

I bought the self-titled Mt. Desolation album from the Music & Video Exchange in Soho for a bargain £2 in May 2011, also getting much indie-er albums by BMX Bandits and The Vaselines at the same time.

Our Keane-related collection

This is an alt-country band led by Keane’s keyboard player Tim Rice-Oxley and bassist Jesse Quin, who are now up to three LPs.

The rest of the band’s works in our house all come from gifts from me to my wife.

Strangeland arrived immediately upon its release in May 2012, the then-brand new double deluxe The Best Of was for Christmas 2013, then came 2010’s Night Train ep for our wedding anniversary in July 2019.

Finally, Cause And Effect appeared on day of release two months later, just ahead of when she went to see them again (without me) at the O₂ Apollo Manchester.

I also gifted her all three of lead singer Tom Chaplin’s solo albums across 2022 – 2016’s The Wave for our wedding anniversary and both the following year’s Twelve Tales Of Christmas and the new Midpoint for Christmas.

As well as the above, Quin appears in my collection on Laura Marling’s 2008 debut album (Alas I Cannot Swim, bought from Amazon in July 2008 for £6.98, at the same time as albums by The Ruby Suns, Scritti Politti and Echo And The Bunnymen), as he was part of her band before joining Keane.

The main event

This was part of a twentieth anniversary tour celebrating their first album, which is definitely my favourite of theirs. However, it has to be said, I’m far from a massive fan of the band. I don’t mind listening to them, but they’re certainly not something I’d choose to put on. Suffice to say, if My Beloved Wife was writing this review, it would be considerably more glowing!

They’re a slightly unusual band in the fact that the songs are largely written by keyboard player Tim Rice-Oxley but sung by Tom Chaplin (who really does have a very strong voice). The other member of the band not so far mentioned is drummer Richard Hughes.

Keane

The set started with Can’t Stop Now from Hopes And Fears, one of its better cuts. Silenced By The Night from Strangeland then featured one of my gig dislikes in the form of an audience clapalong. Call me a misery if you like.

One of my two favourites off Hopes And Fears, Bend And Break, then followed, with the set continuing to feature the odd later track in amongst all of the debut album, in a fairly random order.

In fact, as well as the twelve songs off the first LP, they played four apiece from albums two and four, two off the third LP but strangely just one tune from Cause And Effect, their most recent long player.

The middle of the set featured a couple of low points for me in the rather dull Sunshine and On A Day Like Today, both from Hopes And Fears, with the latter featuring an outbreak of phone torches.

The title track to Perfect Symmetry started off quite clumsily and bass heavy, before righting itself. This was followed by my favourite number of the night, Under The Iron Sea’s A Bad Dream.

Richard Hughes and Tom Chaplin

Despite enjoying that, it prompted me to realise that what I thought that song, and the band in general, are missing for me – something as simple as a guitar.

My music collection is undoubtedly very guitar-based, but I certainly don’t need guitars to enjoy songs or bands – Eleanor Rigby, Great Balls Of Fire, Suicide, Kraftwerk, much hip hop and jazz, the list goes on.

However, I feel that’s what Keane are missing the most. I’m sure their bank manager is pretty sure I’m talking broken biscuits, though, despite being a thought echoed by Lee in the bar afterwards.

As the set drew to its close, some of the bigger hitters came out, of course. Spiralling, one of the better Perfect Symmetry numbers was followed by Iron Sea’s Is It Any Wonder? (which I’ve just discovered was inspired by the Iraq war of the early 2000’s) and the very high-pitched She Has No Time off Hopes And Fears.

Then came a shortened version of 2003 b-side Allemande (which certainly sounds like one), the one addition to the set from the previous night in Brussels. I was unfamiliar with this one, although it is on the second disc of The Best Of that’s in the house.

This Is The Last Time and Somewhere Only We Know (by far their biggest hit single in both the UK and US) from the debut album (one of the weakest and strongest songs on it, respectively, for me) sandwiched Crystal Ball from Under The Iron Sea, with the band then leaving the stage.

Tim Rice-Oxley

It was refreshing to hear the enthusiasm with which the crowd were asking for an encore, as well as repeating some of the singalong that had been led earlier by Chaplin, who had briefly but gamely attempted some French in his occasional between-song chatter.

Strangeland’s In Your Own Time kicked off the extras, as it had done for the first time on the previous show of this tour, before We Might As Well Be Strangers from Hopes And Fears, leaving just one song off that album yet to be performed.

Sovereign Light Café was up next, one of the better songs from Strangeland for me (though, I don’t think I’ve ever listened to the whole album all the way through, However, I’ve probably heard all the tracks at some point on car journeys). This was apparently inspired by a real-life establishment in Bexhill-On-Sea, East Sussex.

Taking a bow

Finally, the show closed with Bedshaped, the third Top 10 single to be released from Hopes And Fears and the favourite of my sister-in-law. In fact, they have only managed to break into the Top 10 once more since (Is It Any Wonder?), although the music world is now a very different place to even 2006.

So ended a show that My Beloved Wife summed up by saying, “Keane absolutely smashed it again. Loved every minute.” Personally, I was somewhat less enthusiastic than that, as indeed I had expected, but I had still had a very enjoyable trip to Paris.

As seems to be much more the case at gigs these days than in my younger days (based on no evidence whatsoever), there were no covers in the set at all.

Just a bit of post-gig digging has revealed that Keane have performed songs by a variety of other acts over the years, including U2, Pulp and this classic by George Harrison:

We returned to our most recent pre-show bar for a couple of nightcaps before making our way back to the hotel through the rainy and slightly treacherous-underfoot-at-times streets, making the journey home the following morning.

My t-shirt

Tonight’s t-shirt

I wore my Paul and George fabs’ t-shirt to honour the most famous previous headliners at this venue.

The only other band tees I spotted were those worn by a couple of my gig-mates, very disappointingly.

These were Red Rum Club from just up the road from where I live, and a home-made Keane one!

 

 

Follow me

If you want to get an email notification each time there is a new blog post (about once a fortnight, on average), then click on the “Follow” button at the bottom.

Playlist

Here is much of the music from the night on Spotify: