The biggest thing to come out of Belgium since the great Iguanadon rush of 1878 – look it up people! – dEUS started out as flailing art-popsters but later settled into the more comfortable role of elder-statesmen of Low Countries rock (Antwerp’s answer to The Frames if you will). By all accounts singer Thomas Barman was rather upset by the lukewarm reception accorded to 2008’s Vantage Point, his disillusionment exacerbated by the problematic tour that followed. So he knocked the band on the head for a while and explored an alternative career in scriptwriting.
Two years on he has regrouped the troops in style with Keep You Close, a bruised and battered affair that recalls the glorious fucked-up-ness of the band’s ‘90s output. Even the most straightforward moments – such as pedal-to-the-floor rocker ‘Dark Sets In’ and the swirling ‘Ghosts’ – reverberate with an unhinged energy and a sense that things could fly off the rails at any moment (that may have something to do with ex-Afghan Whig and full-time scary dude Greg Dulli popping up for a duet). Somewhere between a comeback and a reinvention, this is the sound of dEUS remembering what made them so compelling in the first place.