Keane: Under the Iron Sea and Snow Patrol: Eyes Open

Keane: Under the Iron Sea
Herald rating: * *
Verdict: More lush drippy anthems from the piano-powered trio
Label: Island

Snow Patrol: Eyes Open
Herald rating: * * * *
Verdict: Britrock anthems with extra heartache served here
Label: Polydor

It seems that, since their post-OK Computer left turns, Thom Yorke and his mates have tired of being the old Radiohead. Now he is striking out on his own - if Radiohead are the Pink Floyd of their generation, then Yorke is shaping up as the Roger Waters.

But there are still plenty of British bands still sending in applications to be the New Radiohead. Only without the difficult bits, the wide sonic palette, the sense of despair, or the ambition to musically pull everything apart and put it back together again at dangerous angles.

Of course, Coldplay can be equally blamed for the Great Britrock dilution, and the wide comfort zone in which Keane and Snow Patrol operate.

It's the second album for the guitar-free trio Keane whose debut Hopes and Fears sold millions on the back of wispy anthems sung by cherubic choirboy-cum-frontman Tom Chaplin.

While there are occasions on The Iron Sea when they're sounding positively brooding - well, the Radiohead-cribbed opener Atlantic at least - the rest wanders past in a over-produced swish of, yes, wispy anthems and swooning ballads.

Sometimes they're veering close to U2 territory (the equally annoyingly rhetorical Is It Any Wonder? and Leaving So Soon?, the 80s flashback of Crystal Ball).

Occasionally they're offering cigarette lighter-required pop with an extra dose of attempted profundity (Nothing in My Way, A Bad Dream). The spartan lilting and lovely Hamburg Song suggests the trio can add Chrissie Hynde to their influences. But it also throws into relief how tiresome and overblown the rest is.

Scottish-Northern Irish quintet Snow Patrol got there the long way round, finally getting themselves a breakthrough on 2004 third album Final Straw which delivered a solid line in the sort of guitar-fired anthems that might have sprung from Radiohead in the days before the weirdness.

If anything, new offering Eyes Open ups the six-string fuzz-factor to the point where they often sound like a melancholic British answer to the Foo Fighters on the likes of the riff-tastic Hands Open, Headlights on Dark Roads, and opener You're All I Have.

Frontman Gary Lightbody turns up the elegant moping and bruised heartbeat as the pace slows elsewhere on the likes of You Could Be Happy, Chasing Cars, and Set The Fire to the Third Bar (a fragile duet with Martha Wainwright). While slow-fused epic Make This Go On Forever threatens to do just that while causing a run on the lighter fuel market should it get a stadium airing.

Yes, it's all rather guileless and repetitively lovelorn throughout.

But, unlike Keane, it stops sounding like a collection of others' best bits, and starts sounding like something satisfyingly more than the sum of its sturdy and familiar parts.