Check out the full list here –> Absolute Radio Best Albums of All Time

Way to go everyone who voted!

Also, here’s a fun video from yesterday’s show in Amsterdam- Richard watching Sea Fog from the front row!

Today KM posted a video trailer for Disconnected. Check it out!

Expect the video THIS Monday!

Some great photos of the boys have been posted in the theaureview.com’s photo gallery from SXSW.

Click here to see them!

Also for those of you who speak Spanish (and via translation for those of you who don’t) there is a fantastic article (with a few photos from the Disconnected video shoot) about the new album which you can read HERE.

The translation can be found below and is courtesy of Laura V.

On reaching the house, we see a sweaty man, wearing a shirt, digging a grave with a shovel. Who’s that hole for? “Tom Chaplin, lead singer of Keane. His girlfriend carries him and buries him in the garden, but it turns out he returns as a ghost and walks around
the house, I guess in an attemp of making life miserable for his ex” Tells, light-hearted, one of the assistants of director Juan Antonio Bayona who rolls in Barcelona the new video (with production of Canada) of Keane, the bestseller band that became famous back in 2004 after releasing an elegant pop album, Hopes & Fears, critically acclaimed and made completely without guitars. This band from Battle, a small town located in Southeast England, returns with new work -the fourth- after four years of silence, broken only by an EP, Night Train, in 2010, which the composer himself, Tim Rice-Oxley, considers as a “side project” of the band.

It’s the first weekend of March, and we’re just over an hour’s drive from Barcelona, where Bayona’s team has located, in Capellades town, the perfect house for a film in which, with humour, “succeed one by one the topics of american and italian horror movies from the seventies”.
That’s what The Orphanage director has offered Keane to add images for Disconnected, one of the songs from their new work entitled Strangeland.
The house is stunning, huge, with many rooms to shoot in, with an air of decay that can transmit, at least, a disturbing environment.

The green parlor looks like a box of crickets. It’s virtually impossible to enter that room. The rails and the wagon carrying the camera for the travelling are very cumbersome,
but so are the piano, drums, bass, mic stands and all the props necessary for the takes.
“It’s a treat to see how they work and how difficult can be to build a three-minute film like this one. These guys have more important things to do than this video and look at them, here they are. It’s lovely. We are very lucky” says Rice-Oxley, aware that the director has just finished filming The Impossible, starring Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts.

The take is over and Juan Antonio Bayona, always accompanied by his screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez, looks away from the monitor, installed in the hallway, where he carefully scrutinizes the results of their work. “We declare ourselves to be groupies of this band”- Says the director. Sanchez, author of the screenplay for The Orphanage and also in this horror story for Keane, goes further: “In my office I have a group poster
signed by the three original members (in 2011, Jesse Quin officially joined the band, as the bassist). I have all the shirts from all the tours, I have veneers, I have a mask of Richard Hughes’s face (drummer) that when I wear it, it doesn’t seem I’m wearing anything”
Bayonne replies: “My God … I haven’t gone that far, but, of course, if you look in my ipod, you’ll see all of their albums, singles and even some unpublished ones. Beyond albums or singles, Keane is a group of songs, the ones that are no longer made nowadays. It’s a group of melodies. They could be port songs, from Scots that arrive to the pub from work and start singing. Their songs have certain things that could fit perfectly in movie songs from the 40′s. That’s what I like about the group. ”

The two filmmakers say they met the very same year Keane released their first album. Then began the process leading to the opening of the orphanage in 2008, the first film of Bayonne that succeeded not only in Spain but also in theatres all over the world. “Keane’s music has been part of the soundtrack of our professional lives. So when we were promoting our movie in London, we tried our best to meet them and noticed that there was mutual admiration.” Rice-Oxley confirms: “They came to see us in London at a concert presentation of Perfect Symmetry (Keane’s third album), and I remember Tom and I both had loved The Orphanage. That’s when the idea of collaborating started”

Bayona and Sanchez have only heard 5 of the 12 songs from Strangeland and may be interesting to put them in the position of acting as music critics. “I think this record is the sublimated essence of Keane. The song we’re doing, Disconnected, could perfectly belong to their first album. They clearly have returned to their early days, and I like that. In addition, all their songs tell good stories,” says Sergio Sanchez.
Bayonne analizes the album from a more sentimental prism “Their appeal is the disenchantment. They and we belong to a generation of overprotection in which when something goes minimally wrong, everything is coming down. Getting old becomes a big deal, and you can see that in their songs.
There’s a song on this album called Sovereign Light Cafe which is a lovely song about disenchantment, childhood, and going back to where you grew up in and trying to get recognized or recognize yourself. It is the pure idea of disenchantment.
It’s from another era. Simply a great song. Just don’t try putting it between Jennifer Lopez and Rihanna because it’d be out of place. It is probably one of the best songs ever made and it’s on this last album. And look, if an artist makes two or three songs that stay for ever, I don’t care if the album is better or worse. Although what we have heard from this one is very good. ”

The movie makers go back to work to set things up for a new take on which there’ll be a leaves rain.
The musicians, without hearing the verdict of Bayona and Sanchez are pronounced:
“We wanted to make Keane very clear on this record. Based on our best weapons, on our identity: the voice and keyboards. Back to the essence. With Perfect symmetry we made the mistake of not simplifying. Now we have taken the time to find songs that could be potential singles.” A process that has taken more than three years and where Rice-Oxley wrote over a hundred songs.

But not only have they returned to formal simplicity, but also retook the format that made them great: the absence of guitars. “Tom hates playing guitar,” jokes Rice-Oxley, “and there almost aren’t any on Strangeland. I think many bands based on guitars try to sound like other groups. And with all the modesty of the world, I think we found a sound that we do very well. We have to believe it. People like my songs, they love Tom’s voice, and keyboards create a texture that distinguish us from other bands. Instinctively we are back to that, “says Rice-Oxley. “Sovereign Light Cafe was the first thing I wrote for Strangeland and became the cornerstone of the entire album. This Cafe is a very common-or-garden place. But, despite being worldly, conceals an extraordinary beauty. I think that’s where the metaphor hides. Since Hopes & Fears we’ve liked small storytelling. That’s part of the power of our songs. It might seem more interesting what happens in Las Vegas or London … But the best stories are hidden among ordinary people from any normal town.

Rice-Oxley speaks slowly, thoughtfully and honestly, “Strangeland is a journey of redemption. It’s an attempt to bypass the bad times and survive. Many of the songs exude a great sense of loss and regret. In an emotional sense, it’s like a journey through the darkness to literally come to light. We’ve all made mistakes, sometimes big mistakes, and the album talks about that trip to the other side, towards the place where you find and forgive yourself. ”

Tom Chaplin is more expeditious, “Yes. In some ways what this collection of songs means to me is: ‘Okay, we’ve been through some difficult times, but we have overcome it and are still together as friends. ”

That said, as Bayonne defined it, “The pure idea of disenchantment. A great record.” Even in a haunted house.

Well everyone, it’s here!  Today the official video for Silenced by the Night was released!

It was directed by Chris Sims and filmed around Austin, Texas.

Good day everyone out there in Strangeland! We have a few special announcements that we are happy to tell you about. Firstly we are happy to announce that we will be hosting a 2012 North American tour blog and we need your help to make it happen!

Melani and Derek will be at both Chicago and Milwaukee shows and will be doing a tour blog from those shows along with live twitter updates. We would like to get at least one blog entry from each show so anyone interested, please let us know at keaneshine@gmail.com or tweet to us @keaneshine.

Maybe you are wondering what we’re looking for in a tour blog? We want you to document your entire day in photos, video, and words, the day of the show you’re going to. At the end of the day or next day, just send us your story and we will post it right away!

We still encourage folks to share there live photos with us too so that we may post them (with credit of course!)

Meanwhile, over at Radio Creme Brûlée it looks like “Silenced by the night” has topped airplay charts based on listeners ratings from last week. Here is a link to the airplay charts:

Click here for Charts!

This is the first time Keane has topped their airplay charts since 2010′s “My Shadow”.