Keane @ Mouth Of The Tyne Festival 08/07/2022

I was incredibly excited for this one, having been a massive fan of Keane since their first album. I snatched up tickets for this event as soon as they became available as the festival was originally supposed to take place in the summer of 2020. Of course, the pandemic hit and ruined everything fun. The tickets were sent out the following year but the festival was postponed yet again as the organisers failed to get the go-ahead, even though they hoped it would be alright by then. I’m happy I held on to my physical ticket as we were still able to use it to gain access to the event. I was nervous since it had the wrong year printed on it but I noticed most other people had the same type of ticket from See Tickets, which put my mind at ease. We originally had tickets for Friday and Saturday. Lighthouse Family were supposed to be headlining the next day but broke up a month or so beforehand. I got an e-mail regarding the cancellation when I was on a bus heading to another event (I think Elvis Costello) and couldn’t believe it. That didn’t leave enough time for the organisers to find a replacement, unfortunately. We thought about going the day afterwards to see Newton Faulkner and Sophie Ellis-Bextor instead but we had already planned to return home that day. I’m sure there will be other opportunities to see them. Keane was more than enough to make the trip down south worthwhile.

The drive went quickly for both of us and there was hardly any traffic. We had a good laugh and talked about Pokémon most of the way down, which is an excellent way to pass the time by the way. The Travelodge let us check-in early, so we dumped our bags and went as early as we could to secure a decent place in the queue. Paul rented someone’s driveway to park his car and we got the metro to Tynemouth. The man was so friendly and offered us a lift to the metro but it was just down the road, practically in sight. I had never seen so many beaches in one place. It looked just how I had imagined from the festival poster, which had an illustration of the castle and priory up on a clifftop with a stunning beach below. It automatically became one of my favourite places in the UK and I would love to back again. The festival was brilliant, so we are going to keep an eye on who will be performing there in the future. I expected the queue to be a lot longer by that time of day but it was all very relaxed and most people brought chairs, picnic baskets, cool boxes etc. in with them. The only thing you couldn’t bring in was glass, which makes sense. We wished we had brought food and drinks. Keane did their sound-check while we were waiting and they rattled through a lot of their songs! I thought it was a recording at first, they sounded that good. I thought people were playing their music to get people in the mood.

There wasn’t a mad rush to the stage when we got in, as most people were happy to set up tables and chairs further back. The die-hard fans were already front and centre but we found a space at the barrier off to the right-hand side. The opening act was Eliza Shaddad. We didn’t know her but she has toured with Keane before. She wrote one of her songs in Jesse’s “creative space”, which was interesting to find out about. I can’t remember the titles but might look the songs up on Spotify later. She has a lovely voice but none of the songs stood out to me that much. They might grow on me after a couple more listens. She demonstrated her traditional family call which she explained is part of her Scottish-Sudanese heritage and asked us to replicate it, which seemed impossible. I think that was the point. She said she would come out and sign things at the end but we didn’t spot her. Maybe she did it after her last song but we didn’t want to lose our spot at the barrier and I always get self-conscious talking to musicians and asking them to sign things in case I say anything stupid, which would be highly likely in the heat of the moment.

Keane’s performance is probably the most beautiful thing I have ever experienced. Tom Chaplin’s voice is extraordinarily gorgeous and the setlist couldn’t have been much better. This was the last concert of their summer tour and they ended it with a bang. I am excited for TC’s solo album in September and his upcoming UK tour. I will be first in line for pre-sale tickets. This concert made me wish I saw Keane more than once this summer, so I hope they don’t make us wait too long before returning. Everyone was ecstatic when they came on. The girls beside me had a banner saying they flew across the Mediterranean and Atlantic to get there from Malta. Paul and I are still trying to do the maths. TC asked if they were from South America because that would make more sense. He recognised them from Twitter, where they posted a picture of them dressed as their favourite album covers from the event. He couldn’t figure out which ones they were meant to be representing and they were talking over each other, trying to explain they are ‘Cause and Effect’ and ‘Under the Iron Sea’, their favourite albums. They were twins, so he thought one was ‘Cause’ and the other was ‘Effect’. He asked Tim which album he could come dressed as, suggesting ‘Perfect Timmetry’, a play on ‘Perfect Symmetry’. After an agonising silence, he said they will move on and he will spare us from more dad jokes.

I knew most of the songs word for word but there were two or three I would have only heard when the albums first came out. I have been listening to their albums since coming home and have even downloaded all of their EPs. Paul just knew a handful but enjoyed the concert more than he expected to and added his favourite songs of the night to a playlist in his car! Success. I said to him I might need an ambulance when the intro to ‘Bedshaped’ started as it is one of the most gorgeous songs I had ever head – I joked I might faint. We always joke I either die or turn into a puddle of water whenever I hear my favourite songs live. I didn’t know how they could top ‘Bedshaped’ and ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ for the encore but ‘Sovereign Light Café’ turned out to be our favourite of the set. It is also the one we now listen to the most often.

TC was so funny and spoke a lot between songs. It was not scripted at all and everything he said was relevant to this particular event. He explained he and Tim got the train and almost didn’t make it in time, while the other band members were sending pictures of themselves having a whale of a time on the beach and paddling in the water. That is probably why the sound-check was so late. His neck was hurting him and he complained we didn’t show enough sympathy when he commented on it cracking during one of the songs. He also asked if anyone was from Middlesborough, which seemed like a random question until he said that was where their first gig away from home was and it is close to Tynemouth. He also said he could see people on the promenade from the stage and a man three quarters of the way into the crowd raised his hand but TC said he didn’t mean him but people who never paid to get in. Near the end, he spotted an eight year old boy wearing a t-shirt which said “My first gig” on it and made a fuss over him because of that, asking if he was enjoying himself. It took a minute for the boy to respond but I think he was not expecting the recognition. A woman behind us got arrested between ‘Is It Any Wonder?’ and ‘A Bad Dream’. We turned around to see a policeman wading his way through the crowd, all of a sudden. Paul noticed a disturbance beforehand but I was oblivious, as I was mesmerised by Keane. I thought the lyrics after the arrest were very fitting – ‘I’m just too tired to be fighting, guess I’m not the fighting kind’.TC made sure everyone was okay and asked what happened but nobody answered his question. One confident fan shouted “I’m from Italy!” and he responded, “Okay? What’s that got to do with the police thing?” So funny. He added, “You just saw me make eye contact and took your chance, didn’t you?”

Tim broke the main keyboard at one point, testing it out dramatically while everyone else on the stage shot questioning looks at him. The crew immediately rolled out the other keyboard and managed to fix it before the end of the next song. It was entertaining watching them lift the lid and go at it with various tools while the band continued performing. Afterwards, TC joked Tim broke it because he is a rock god. I didn’t notice at the time but Paul said Jesse played parts of ‘Seven Nation Army’ by The White Stripes when the piano broke and he had nothing else to do at the time. I need to get better at noticing smaller details like this.

It was such a gorgeous evening. There was apparently a lot of wind and you can tell if you look up videos from the night on YouTube. It wasn’t affecting us where we were, sheltered by the stage. The crew had to take the ‘KEANE’ backdrop down, much to my disappointment. TC said he pictured this being a night time gig but the sun refused to set for ages. He did seem quite blinded by it at times. He commented on the beautiful sunset and how lovely the moon looked at the end of the night. When it all sadly came to an end, he said they would be back but they don’t know when that will be. I hope they keep touring because I want to see them ten thousand more times. This was the best way to experience the band for the first time, with a perfect venue, setting, atmosphere etc. We missed out on the merch stall because we went to get food and locals started chatting to us. It was nice to mingle with regular attendees though, I thought. I ordered a ‘Strangeland’ t-shirt off their website instead, which is green unlike any of my other band t-shirts. My mum said that all my other t-shirts are black and she’s not totally wrong. One or two are blue! I am going to wait with baited breath for Keane to announce another album or tour. I know TC is busy promoting his solo album at the moment and Mt. Desolation (Tim and Jesse) are doing their own thing but I hope this is not the end of the band. The twentieth anniversary of ‘Hopes and Fears’ is in 2024. If they do a tour for that, I know it will be worth the wait.

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GALLERY:

This pun

The stage

Chilled out people

Tom Chaplin

Dramatic pose

Tim, the piano god

Big smile from Jesse

Guitar makes an appearance 

Another of Paul’s very aesthetically pleasing shots

Tom, Richard and Tim!

The end

Moon

Sunset

The venue as we were leaving

And the beach!