Keane

Recorded live at central Europe's most important Jazz Club "Porgy & Bess" Vienna during an extensive tour this double album consist of original compositions featuring new music by saxophonist Guido Spannocchi with his quartet and presents an insight into entirely new arrangements as well as stunning interplay by one of London's most exciting ensemble.

We first meet William Keane in the Port Authority bus terminal where he is desperately searching for his 6-year-old daughter, who has been missing for months. Repeatedly drawn to the site of the purported abduction, Keane wanders the bus station compulsively going over the events of that fateful day. Veering between days of relentless searching and nights of alcohol and drug induced extremes of self-destructive behavior; he seems to be teetering precariously on the edge of sanity. Then one day he meets a financially strapped young woman, Lynn Bedik, and her seven-year-old daughter, Kira, who are also staying at the same transient motel in New Jersey. He reaches out to them and soon the mother entrusts him to pick up Kira after school and bring her home. As he becomes increasingly attached to the child, the story moves to a whole new level of poignancy and tension, as Keane searches for redemption through the little girl.

Keane’s fifth studio album Cause and Effect is based on two key life moments: a marriage breakup and a night of drinking that resulted in a car accident and DUI arrest. Both happened to Keane songwriter and keyboardist Tim Rice-Oxley. As is Keane’s way, the intimate, if painful, memories (and residual lessons learned) blossom into something transformational and triumphant. But, as he notes, putting such personal and vulnerable moments out in the open is a little easier when you have one of the greatest Britpop singers, Tom Chaplin, interpreting your words. “There's no one else I would trust with that information and those songs that are so important to me,” Rice-Oxley tells Apple Music. “For me, it's a real pleasure to hear him take that raw material and make it into something heavenly.” Rice-Oxley took Apple Music through Cause and Effect track by track.

In this very special episode of Cloch le Carn, airing on Bank Holiday Monday, we celebrate the life and times of one of Ireland’s most respected musicians, lifelong member of The Chieftains, Seán Keane.