Pop/Rock

Latest CD releases reviewed

KEANE
Under the Iron Sea Island ****

Not content with selling five million copies of their debut album, Keane now want to be respected. During the build-up to the release of this record, they talked about internal conflict and of writing raw songs with an unrecognisable intensity and fury. They don't want to be the ultimate bed-wetting band anymore. Well, they needn't worry. Keyboard player Tim Rice-Oxley, their driving force, has toyed with vintage synths he picked up as Keane scorched around the globe (again, there are no guitars) and has crafted a great, lyrically bleak, experimental record. At times, there is a twist of Kid A-period Radiohead (Atlantic) and echoes of early electro U2 (Is It Any Wonder, Crystal Ball). The old soaraway Keane rears enough to please the returning millions, but there is much in the themes of emptiness and self-doubt to suggest a band well beyond post-pubescent choirboys. Difficult second album? No way. A dark and surprising return. www.keanemusic.com  Paul McNamee

ELVIS COSTELLO & ALLEN TOUSSAINT
The River in Reverse Verve ****

Elvis is having a fine old time these days, hobnobbing with his heroes such as 68-year-old New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint, with whom he has recorded this mixed but ultimately valuable set. Toussaint is the man behind such songs as Lady Marmalade and Working in a Coal Mine, working as producer, writer, pianist and, in many cases, all three. For this 13-track outing (aimed at showcasing the revival of New Orleans) he generally takes a back seat as Elvis and his Imposters, allied to the Crescent City Horns, select from his back pages or crank out a few new songs framed in the New Orleans tradition. Some of Elvis's own songs and his collaborations sound the wrong side of forced, particularly Broken Promise Land, but when they score they score big-time, as on Nearer to You, Ascension Day, On Your Way Down and All These Things. www.verveforecast.com Joe Breen

THE DIVINE COMEDY
Victory for the Comic Muse Parlophone ***

Neil Hannon has won the right to plough his own musical furrow, but he's in danger of wandering off down some obscure roads and losing touch with rock's main thoroughfare. Hannon's ninth album is more of a chamber suite, delivered with understated panache, but also often displaying a certain musical parochialism. To Die a Virgin belongs more to a time when teenagers were spotty, sexually frustrated creatures and not the carnally knowledgeable hipsters of today. Mother Dear conjures up quaint Hovis visions, and A Lady of a Certain Age evokes that Peter Sarstedt hit from the 1960s. There's clever wordplay aplenty in such songs as Diva Lady, Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World and Count Grassi's Passage Over Piedmont, although some of the metaphors feel a bit laboured, and some of the lines verge on the verbose. The Plough, however, is a beautifully told tale of a man on a quest for meaning, while the cover of The Associates' Party Fears Two proves that not even Hannon can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. www.thedivinecomedy.com Kevin Courtney

ED HARCOURT
The Beautiful Lie EMI **

Releasing five albums in six years can give rise to accusations of being prolific or spreading yourself too thin. Such views seem apt when it comes to Ed Harcourt's album, which promises so much and delivers so little. The Beautiful Lie is oddly underwhelming despite intriguing lyrics and rich arrangements. The problem is the worthy-but-dull material that teeters on the brink of David Gray and Coldplay cast-offs. Multiple instruments and obligatory guest appearances (Graham Coxon and BJ Cole) fail to resurrect this above the level of unremarkable. While Harcourt should retrace his steps to solid earlier work such as From Every Sphere, he manages to salvage something with closer Good Friends Are Hard to Find. But by then it all sounds less than the sum of its parts. www.edharcourt.com  Sinéad Gleeson

RONAN KEATING
Bring You Home Polydor **

Ronan Keating continues to make career moves that, while not exactly inspiring, at least make some kind of sense. Hence, his cover of The Golden Horde's Friends in Time, a terrific song Ronanised into something that original songwriters Simon Carmody and Des O'Byrne might have envisioned but never realised: a certified hit across Europe and beyond. The other good thing here is a collaboration with someone of the calibre of Kate Rusby, who co-sings on All Over Again. The fact that Keating went with Rusby rather than the usual rent-a-celeb-singer is admirable - and very pleasantly surprising. The rest is generic, predictable commercial pop, although Keating's take on Neil Diamond's Hello Again is simply woeful. You'll hear worse albums this year, mind, and we still suspect that Keating is capable of better; the songs are out there, but his choices remain stuck between efficient and baffling. www.ronankeating.com  Tony Clayton-Lea

EVERY MOVE A PICTURE
Heart = Weapon V2 **

Another day, another supercool band with a sentence fragment for a name, and another chance for us to dig out those Duran-meets-Clash comparisons. This San Francisco four-piece would like to follow their Vegas neighbours The Killers into the big time - singer Brent Messenger is another Brandon Flowers in the making - but they probably wouldn't enjoy the kind of backlash currently being suffered by their NY counterparts The Bravery, with whom they have more in common than they'd care to admit. The songs are driving, bass-driven tunes that blend twisted guitars with tinkering keyboards, all topped off by Messenger's arch vocal delivery, which sounds like a blend of Midge Ure and that bloke from Blancmange. There's a sleek, chrome-plated sheen to such songs as Signs of Life, Chemical Burns and Dust, but it's undermined by an almost slavish devotion to the songwriting conventions of early 1980s synthpop. The all-too-familiar octave-jumping disco basslines, the keyboard's annoying habit of lingering too long, and Messenger's maddening way of half-swallowing his lines: all these go to making Every Move an artificial picture. www.everymoveapicture.com Kevin Courtney