English soft-rock quartet Keane have reportedly sold over ten million albums since their 1997 formation. I say again: ten million bleedin’ albums. Rarely has such a baffling music-related statistic been committed to print, but luckily I’m more energetic than confused as that’s a lot of slaps to hand out. But seriously, who buys this interminably bland dross? Surely Keane can’t have built their entire career on their ability to sell CDs as Christmas stocking fillers? It’s time to own up if you are one of those ten million. The fact that these hopeless dullards have had enough ‘hits’ to warrant a best-of suggests that many of you are probably repeat offenders, but it’s okay; we all make mistakes. Use this compilation as a tool with which to re-evaluate your music tastes, and move away from the Coldplay-on-a-bad-day ‘Everybody’s Changing’, headache-inducing ‘Silenced By The Night’, and uncomfortably dour ‘Somewhere Only We Know’. They may be serial music media whipping boys, but this twenty-track album shows exactly why; if it were named The Worst of Keane the effect would be exactly the same. The fact that the majority of songs are drawn from their first two albums – 2004’s Hopes and Fears and 2006’s Under The Iron Sea – suggests that even the band members themselves realise that their day has passed, and hopefully now they have a ‘greatest hits’ under their belts they’ll do the right thing and disappear to somewhere only they know. (Island)