Keane

England’s Keane presents a good news/bad news conundrum. The good news is they’re being touted as the new Coldplay. The bad news is they’re being touted as the new Coldplay. Keane is not much of an insult to Chris Martin’s band and in fairness, they don’t even have a guitar in the band, so the similarities are purely based on emotions. Hopes And Fears is a lite-rock album that slides somewhere into a niche between Travis and Dido. The music will earn an excited thumbs up from baby boomers as the songs only get as loud as a piano can, for this trio is comprised of a singer, pianist and drummer (an interesting gimmick, I mean concept). Singer Tom Chaplin has an angelic voice that hits the warm and fuzzy spot inside, which works like a charm on tracks like "Somewhere Only We Know” and "Bedshaped.” The money shot though is "Everybody’s Changing,” a song that sounds so painfully familiar that it hurts when the realisation that it is not an original David Gray composition sinks in. Some people will label this as wimpy trite that is as damaging to music as American Idol, but it’s hard to turn away from the 11 guilty pleasures here, because Keane are so good at being wimps.