In an era when bands are impossibly hyped and record companies look for easy money, it’s very easy to be cynical about a band labelled ‘the new Coldplay’. Keane are the unfortunate recipients of this tag, but the comparisons are easy to make.

Their piano led and often melancholy songs occupy the same ground as Coldplay (life can be a bit crap, especially when girls are involved) and you can easily slip Tom Chaplin, Keane’s polite pin-up singer, into Chris Martin’s place.  Having said all that though, it’s a relief to find that Keane don’t sound like Coldplay at all. At this point, I should probably mention that Keane don’t have a guitarist or bass player. No, really.

Hopes & Fears starts off with ‘Somewhere Only We Know’, the bands first single proper, which impressively reached number three in the charts in February this year.  Powerful, anthemic and catchy, it perfectly illustrates the Keane sound of pounding piano, big drums and even bigger vocals.  Singer Chaplin is almost an enigma, his voice pitched somewhere between Thom Yorke, Fran Healy and Chris Martin.  Perhaps the biggest compliment you can pay him is that he sounds, often fleetingly, like Jeff Buckley, particularly on ‘She Has No Time’.  His powerful, almost chameleon vocals are hugely important to the Keane sound.

The songs on Hopes & Fears are more upbeat than you would expect and unlike a lot of Coldplay’s output, won’t leave you running for the razor blades in the bathroom cabinet.  ‘Bend & Break’, ‘This is the Last Time’ and ‘Can’t Stop Now’ are bouncy tunes with huge choruses.  That’s not to say that this is a happy record. 

The bouncy tunes hide lyrics about break ups, loneliness and feeling left behind, while songs like ‘We Might As Well Be Strangers’ and ‘She Has No Time’ drip with melancholy.  That said, Chaplin’s muscular voice and the clever sounds and loops used by producer Andy Green raise the songs above the usual depressing introspective indie bedsit sound.  In fact, they’re strangely more atmospheric than melancholic and a lot of the slower songs have a dreamy feel, particularly ‘Sunshine’.

By the time the album closes with the sublime ‘Bedshaped’, you realise that Keane don’t need any comparisons to Coldplay - they have more than enough talent to make their own way.  It’s a huge sounding and astonishingly confident record for a debut, but the atmospheric, melodic songs, cleverly produced, for once see the hype surrounding a band justified.  Is that Chris Martin looking over his shoulder?
(4½/5)

Release date: 10 May 2004