Review - Keane - Strangeland

Keane returns to their roots (and yet strays even further from them in some ways) on their fourth full length ‘Strangeland’. The CD shows the band playing with different song structures, different melodies, different sounds on each track. There is more musical variety on this album than on their past efforts, that’s for sure. Parts of it almost sound like someone else (“On The Road” and “Disconnected” – which sounds almost like a 70’s American soft rock ballad), if it weren’t for Tim Rice-Oxley’s unmistakable vocals and the ever-present piano. While I do applaud the foursome for spending extra time and effort working on their musicianship, ‘Strangeland’ is missing a big single, which is something that I have always found amazing about the group. You wouldn’t expect that a piano-fronted rock group could have so many hits, but they have (at least in their hometown of the UK), collecting 10 top 40 hits. For comparison, only one song from ‘Strangeland’ has charted – first single “Silenced By The Night” made it to #46.

Listen to: “Silenced By The Night”, “Sovereign Light Café” and “Day Will Come”