The Art Of Backpedalling

One of the dangers of being an "armchair musical expert" like myself is that, like all people who claim to have all the answers, there inevitably comes a time when someone who actually does know something comes along and proves that you were talking complete tosh. Its a bit like being that guy down the pub (and every pub has at least one such guy), who holds forth on every topic under the sun - whatever the current news story, whatever you're discussing, he's always got an opinion and its always the right one. There's always then a cheer of joy when they are proved completely wrong and have to suffer their ideas being shot down in flames. It is at that point that the "expert" must take it like a man and do the decent thing - which is not admit to being wrong, but rather deflect the criticism away by pretending that you knew it all along and were just trying to prove how lots of other people think, or just launch a counter-argument to draw attention away from the embarrassment of being proved wrong. This, my friends, is the ancient art of backpedalling, and I shall now prove that you don't need to be a unicycling circus clown to be able to do it.

In my previous update, I confidently proclaimed the use of an ebow in the bridges of The Lovers Are Losing. Queue much confusion from my readers (I almost typed "my fanbase", but just managed to keep my ego in check!) - those familiar with the ebow were struggling to know where I was hearing it, while those who had no idea what an ebow is were struggling to know what I was actually on about in the first place. Well, basically the ebow is a little handheld device that you can use with a guitar (electric or acoustic, but its only particularly useful with an electric guitar) - it consists of an electro-magnet, a 9 volt battery and very little else and it causes a string on the guitar to vibrate when its held over it. Its name is short for Electronic Bow and it enables the sound of the guitar string to sustain indefinitely, which opens up all kinds of sonic possibilities - think of the droning lead sounds of U2's With Or Without You** or R.E.M's E-Bow The Letter (the Remington effect - they liked it so much they named the song after it). Anyway, its a very distinctive sound that's quite different to just plucking the string with a plectrum - you get a soft attack and smooth, virtually infinite sustain. When listening to The Lovers Are Losing, I was convinced that there's an ebow'd guitar sound in the bridges - roughly in the areas just before the choruses (if you listened to the Lamacq 6music playback, its in the right channel and is a three note ascending pattern). So confident was I, in fact, that I put it in writing: "And until I'm proved wrong, I'm going to maintain that there's ebow on there in the bridges".

However, a Mr. Tim Rice-Oxley from East Sussex has been in touch to say that there is in fact no ebow there at all - the sound to which I was referring (still probably a complete mystery to most of you!) is in fact a Tom Chaplin "oooooh" backing vocal. How embarrassing - the only saving grace for me is that Tim does acknowledge that Tom's BV part does sound a bit like an ebow. Of course, I knew that it was Tom all along and was merely congratulating him on managing to do such a convincing impression of the ebow... ahem. Seriously, no excuses though guv'nor, you've got me banged to rights - I was wrong in my proclamation of the ebow and I will send myself to bed without milk and cookies as punishment for my geek sense letting me down. Apologies to you Mr Chaplin, if you're reading... :)

Moving swiftly on, Tim also revealed that the Juno-6 features heavily through the track, providing filter sweeps and "pings" (his words, not mine!). Best of all though, he also says that the main "riff" sound is not from any fancy, expensive or rare vintage analog synthesizer but is in fact from that much maligned "instrument", a stylophone! Apparently, it was run through the Roland Chorus Echo box and then through a guitar amp - things don't get much more experimental than that! Who'd have thought that the stylophone would be one of the lead instruments on Keane's comeback single? I've got a Juno and a stylophone myself at Backline HQ, so I imagine I'll be experimenting some more if I can find some spare time!

To pick up on something else from the last update - the more I've listened to Better Than This, the more unfair it actually seems for some people to immediately write it off as nothing more than an Ashes To Ashes clone. Whilst I don't think there's much argument about the similarity in the sound of the chorused riff, the rest of the song is very different to the Bowie track - his influence is there, but when you listen to the track, its still definitely got that "Keane" touch and the whole mood of the music is very different. I suspect people have put the barriers up to it and don't really want to give it a fair hearing, which is a shame - its actually a really fun, catchy song. I wouldn't be surprised if people can get much more into it when its done live. I also forgot to give mention to the handclaps through it - can't help but smile at the thought of the four of them huddled around a mic when recording them!

Finally, thanks to all of you have taken the time to get in touch and let me know what you think of the site - I appreciate it! I do read all your comments, so don't think that I'm being rude if I don't respond. Its just laziness rather than ignorance... :) However, I'll keep growing the site over the next few months (yes, the gear listing section will appear soon!), so keep stopping by! I've already had a couple of suggestions about things to possibly include on the site (thanks for those, I'll see what I can do!), but if you've got a great idea for something geeky related to Keane, let me know!

In the meantime, here's my latest confident-proclamation-that-will-likely-be-completely-wrong - the riff in Better Than This is done with a Rhodes-style electric piano sound, rather an acoustic piano (as in Ashes To Ashes). Discuss. ;)

** Although to confuse things further, With Or Without You wasn't actually done with an ebow, but with a custom system built into a guitar but using a similar basic principle.