Phil Mongredien 

Keane: Strangeland – review

Keane's return to piano-led pop is quietly impressive, writes Phil Mongredien
  
  


Keane threw a curveball with the surprisingly effective 80s synth-pop stylings of 2008's Perfect Symmetry. Their fourth album proper, however, finds them back on more familiar territory, once again plotting a course through the sort of classy, yet anthemic, piano-led material that first brought them to prominence. The epic "The Starting Line" has something of Abba's "One of Us" to its verse and is surely destined for soundtrack heartstring-tugging, slow-motion sports footage montages. "Black Rain", meanwhile, finds frontman Tom Chaplin sounding eerily like Thom Yorke. There isn't anything as irresistible as "Everybody's Changing" or "Spiralling" this time around, but this is still another smoothly accomplished set.

 

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