Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 20/10/08
Label: Polydor

It's a sign of just how safe most bands play it that Keane's recent addition of a few '80s tricks to their sound has been greeted as an astonishingly bold re-invention akin to The Beatles going psychedelic or Bowie killing off Ziggy. If you want to see a band who are really prepared to risk antagonising their fans you should look to Bloc Party. Once the schmindiest of indie bands, all scratchy guitars and muddled melodies, Bloc Party have mutated into a stranger, darker, more dance-indebted beast, and are vastly better for it.

"Talons" is a fusion of pummelling big beats, heavily treated vocals, hacksaw guitars and lunging melodrama which at certain points sounds like the extraordinary, much-missed mavericks Curve or The Prodigy at their dirtiest. Not that Kelly seems happy about his new freedom, delivering lyrics of typically po-faced angst. "I have been wicked! I have been arrogant!" he wails, before screaming in the chorus for "Anne Widdecombe!" (disappointingly, closer listens suggest this may actually be "and when it comes"). Though not as sleek and convincing as "Flux", still their finest hour, "Talons" is a gripping, compelling and pleasingly weird outburst from pop's new awkward brigade.

    by Jaime Gill