Strangeland

Keane’s last album saw the East Sussex band moving towards experimental pop after the straightforward anthemic rock of their first two records. Critics loved the shift in emphasis and heightened ambition – but you sense that it jarred with their fanbase (it was their poorest selling release to date). Four years and one unlikely side project later (songwriter Tim Rice-Oxley’s country-tinged Mt. Desolation) Keane, now a four-piece with the addition of bassist Jesse Quin, have returned emphatically, though perhaps not quite triumphantly, to their windswept aesthetic. There are tinges of early hit ‘This Is The Last Time’ on ‘On The Road’; ‘Sovereign Light Cafe’, named for a local landmark in their home town of Battles, is a coming-of-age ballad that (just about) skirts around cloying. Granted, the beat-soaked closer ‘Sea Fog’ has vestiges of their latter-day experimental output. Overall, though, Strangeland is the work of a band refining their classic blueprint rather than trying to do anything new or different. If you’re already fan, you’ll love it. If not, it will probably confirm your suspicions that Keane are essentially a less successful Coldplay with lashings of plaintive piano drizzled on top.