So this is what modern music's come to
There was a time when Coldplay proudly held the position of 'World's Most Boring Whiny "Indie" Band' but Keane have managed to surpass them. Duller than the English cricket team or a series of Celebrity Big Brother populated entirely by the Scottish Executive, they manage to deprive listeners of the will to live through sheer monotony and whinginess.
'A Bad Dream' is exactly what it says on the case and exactly what one expects from these not-even-pioneers (since Coldplay got there first) of boredom who stole the very worst of Coldplay et al's ideas and chucked them out at the record-buying public. It is a mess of simpering piano, overly softened percussion and horrendously whiny vocals. 'A Bad Dream' aims to be an anthemic description of love gone wrong; but musically it is nothing but a poor re-hash of clichés we've all heard before, and lyrically it's impossible to have any sympathy for a grown man who sings words like 'No-one on my side / I was fighting / But I just feel too tired to be fighting' (the only thing worse than moany lyrics being badly-written moany lyrics, of course).
No doubt Keane's legions of brain-washed fans who believe that everything popular is somehow good will rush to buy or download this track if they don't already own it on 'Under the Iron Sea', an album which shares its title with the place it should be confined to. The best that the rest of us can hope for is that this nightmare isn't played too much on the radio and that the band have musical differences before writing another album. Not that musical differences are likely in a band so devoid of musical knowledge, but we can but hope.