Sometimes readers, it gets rather difficult to wade through the week's press releases. Especially the ones promoting beardy types who put trees/wooden shacks/barren landscapes on the front of their album (and yet still expect this to be some sort of enticement to listening to the bloody thing). Anyhoo, this morning, one plopped into our Inbox from the mighty Keane. And it has single handedly restored our faith in indie pop.

Spiralling, the munificently gifted free single which was downloaded by no less than 500,000 people in its first week, now has a video. And according to Keane's press spam, it is all about "the difference between the idealised dream and the dystopian reality of human existence."

Here is the video:

Correct us if we are wrong, but that made us think about the "difference between the idealised dream and the dystopian reality of human existence."

Which is a gloriously massive statement of intent for a pop video, although possibly too intellectual for a Monday morning. Undaunted, we have watched it at least ten times, and now bring you a deconstruction, in conjunction with Professor 'My head is so massive I find it troublingly difficult to buy bobble hats in the winter months' McFiggleswick, who is from the Northshire University of Smartrsse.

So, Professor 'My head is so massive I find it troublingly difficult to buy bobble hats in the winter months' McFiggleswick, WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT?

"The significance of utopian thought for education can be made evident through reconceptualizing utopia and approaching it alongside the notion of dystopia. Awareness of dystopian elements of reality radicalizes the kind of critique that assists utopian thought and makes engagement with it more pressing. Awareness of the lurking danger of future dystopia goes hand in hand with a utopia that is cautious and vigilant of its own possible turn into catastrophe. If education is not just an institution of the unreflective socialization and social integration of the young immersed in technicist and prudentialist goals, if it is about futurity and vision of a better world, it has to rely on, and renegotiate, utopian thought. Yet, all this presupposes a new descriptive account of the self and the world that breaks with the kind of anthropology and ethics that generated a particular conception of utopia as impossible and purely oneiric."

Mmn, exactly what we thought. And this bit has some pretty neon spirals. And spirals='Spiralling', what is the name of the song.

"Well, the spiral plays a certain role in symbolism, and appears in megalithic art, notably in the Newgrange tomb or in many Galician petroglyphs such as the one in Mogor, c.f. the triple spiral. While scholars are still debating the subject, there is a growing acceptance that the simple spiral, when found in Chinese art, is an early symbol for the sun. Roof tiles dating back to the Tang Dynasty with this symbol have been found west of the ancient city of Chang'an (c.f. modern-day Xian). It is the most ancient symbol found on every civilized continent. Due to its appearance at burial sites across the globe, the spiral most likely represented the "life-death-rebirth" cycle. Similarly, the spiral symbolized the sun, as ancient people thought the sun was born each morning, died each night, and was reborn the next morning."

Here are some robots. Are Keane trying to tell us that they feel like indie robots in the evil machine of pop? Or something else?

"The person accompanying robot is such legged mobile robot that is possible to follow the person utilizing its vision. Towards future aging society, human collaboration and human support are required as novel applications for robots. Such human collaborative robots share the same space with human. But conventional robots are isolated from humans and lack the capability to observe humans. A study on human observing function of robot is crucial to realize novel robot such as service and pet robot. To collaborate and support humans properly human collaborative robot must have capability to observe and recognize humans. As a base for the human observing function of the prototype robot, we must realise face tracking utilizing skin color extraction and correlation based tracking."

Yes, that was what we thought. And this bit is about war, isn't it? And war is bad.

"The first issue to be considered is what is war and what is its definition. The student of war needs to be careful in examining definitions of war, for like any social phenomena, definitions are varied, and often the proposed definition masks a particular political or philosophical stance paraded by the author. This is as true of dictionary definitions as well as of articles on military or political history. Cicero defines war broadly as "a contention by force"; Hugo Grotius adds that "war is the state of contending parties, considered as such"; Thomas Hobbes notes that war is also an attitude: "By war is meant a state of affairs, which may exist even while its operations are not continued"; Denis Diderot comments that war is "a convulsive and violent disease of the body politic;" for Karl von Clausewitz, "war is the continuation of politics by other means", and so on. Each definition has its strengths and weaknesses, but often is the culmination of the writer's broader philosophical positions."

Ok. We are feeling a bit thick but are fairly sure this next bit is about sex.

"Sex is relevant to the architect of the ideal society on two counts: it is the means of producing new guardians, and it is emotionally charged and potentially divisive. So long as the guardians are celibate, male and female guardians can co-operate on a basis of complete equality: but motherhood cannot be abolished if there are to be guardians in time to come, and once mating and child-bearing are allowed, problems arise. Motherhood is time-consuming. Modern career women may be able to concentrate on their jobs without denying their sexual appetites, thanks to contraceptives, but Plato could not want his female guardians to opt out of motherhood altogether, because that would be dysgenic. Once a rigorous selection-procedure is adopted whereby all the best people are identified and promoted to being guardians, they cannot be allowed to opt out of parenthood, or the gene-pool would be rapidly depleted of all the best genes. If you have actually bothered to read this bit, well done. We really did not expect anyone would. But now you are here we will let you into a secret, which is that we have a bit of a pash on Tom out of Keane. And now, back to the boringness. Children will be born to female guardians, and will have to be cared for. It would be a great waste of valuable administrative and academic talent to have top-class females acting as nursery-maids. So there must be crèches. Our society has a similar problem, when career women decide to start a family. In time past it was possible for them to hand over nursery functions to nannies, recruited from the lower, or at least not-so-top, classes, but in the second half of the twentieth century it has been difficult to accept that some women should look after other women's babies, because it implies, or is thought to imply, lower status. It is often felt that the solution we should adopt is that the father should stay at home and be an au pair boy, but Plato could not have countenanced that, because eugenic breeding would require that top-class females should mate with top-class males, who could no more than their spouses be spared for domestic duties. Plato is led to the community of children and their communal upbringing in communal crèches simply on the economic grounds of getting the greatest possible amount of work out of female workers, in much the same way as the Russians do: there must be no polupragmosune among the guardians in respect of child-rearing any more than in any other sphere of life."

Exactly. What he said. Sex. Thank you, Professor McFiggleswick.

Keane's forthcoming album, ‘Perfect Symmetry’ is released on October 13th, and ‘The Lovers Are Losing,’ is out a week later. It heralds something of a new direction for indie pop's Head Boys, who we rather admire for being stoic in the face of widespread industry piss-ripping. We are also very keen (ha, ha) on anything with big ideas, so well done them.

Keane on the internets