The fellows who know how to write a pop song, but aren't afraid of being just a little bit weird with it. The second half is where the more interesting, subtle and, ironically, catchier stuff lurks: all of a sudden the Keane I've always liked emerges. They're still hardly terrible pop songs, but it feels slightly too easy, slightly too much like they're resting on their laurels. In attempting to bring back the slow-burn-much-loved song to appeal to the attention-free Twitter crowd, they often end up not quite achieving either. Songs like 'Sovereign Light Cafe' are clearly supposed to be the megahits, but there's just nothing here that matches 'Everybody's Changing' for group singalong wallop, although 'Disconnected' arguably comes closest. There are no less than six songs in the first seven that match this exact formula, the exception being the verging-on-maudlin 'Watch How You Go', in such a weird place it almost kills the album stone dead before it gets going. There is a formula to the standard Keane hit: verse+bridge+chorus+Chaplin soaring vocals+GINORMOUS MIDDLE EIGHT=anthem klaxon. With the overarching theme of friends pulling each other out of strife, Rice-Oxley's lyrics are at their most contemplative here, the likes of 'The Starting Line' imploring the protagonist to " ignore the ghosts that make you old before your time". And that is what makes Strangeland oftentimes frustrating: knowing that actually, Keane are capable of making genuinely interesting pop music, more than many of the contemporaries they get lumped in with, yet here they've taken several steps backwards.Ĭalming it down does mostly work the album's tales of growing up in small towns probably would not work quite so well if there was some electronic demon monster all over their boink. Perfect Symmetry, meanwhile, was pure sparkly mayhem, derailed by going one song too far rather than playing it safe. Under The Iron Sea's narrowly-averted attempts at slaughtering each other in song is still, I think, one of the last decade's more underrated albums for Tim Rice-Oxley's most passionate (and occasionally vicious) lyrics. They have also tried so many tacks and still sold a gazillion copies that by this stage they've pretty much earned the right to do whatever they want, and, well, complaining about it is probably a bit pointless. Keane do what they do, namely Treatises On The World At Large, Set To Anthemics, and, generally speaking, do it rather well. Yes in this scenario I am the fluffball pup and I am guzzling the cocoa (despite chocolate apparently being death to dogs but WHATEVER IT'S A METAPHOR) while in the background we have The Keane's newest effort Strangeland, trying to be one of those reassuring pet owners. There are times when life in the city all gets a bit much and your ceiling falls down and you're donating your entire life savings to TFL to get to work and Boys Are Rubbish and you just want a hot chocolate and for someone to tell you 'there there, it's okay' while patting you on the head like one of those ridiculously fluffy Crufts dogs. Look, you might just have to give me this one.
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