In the liner notes to Scottish band Del Amitri's Best Of collection, Dels manager Stevey Tooke once told band stalwarts Justin Currie and Iain Harvie, To lose one band member might be considered careless. To lose fackin' about a dozen in a dozen or something years is right bleedin' stupid!

One couldn't help but be reminded of that anecdote when hearing about the history of British trio Keane and their bold debut album Hopes and Fears. In their present form, the group consists entirely of Richard Hughes on Drums, Tom Chaplin on Vocals and Tim Rice-Oxley on Piano and Keyboards. In the studio, Rice-Oxley also plays the bass parts but you can assume he can't do that and play piano at the same time.

Please jump in at anytime and tell me what's wrong with this description. Oh, they did have a guitarist in Dominic Scott a while back but he left and the lads thought they didn't need to go through the whole re-hiring process. Further to that, Chaplin also used to play acoustic guitar but that also ceased. Even further to that, the music they specialise in can best be described as soaring and epic. Clearly these guys are either thinking outside the square or are incredibly stupid.

Amazingly though, it works and works well. The eleven songs that adorn Hopes and Fears have a vast landscape of shades and textures that you would not think would be possible given the groups depleted ranks. Rice-Oxley, who once went to college with Chris Is that Bono on the line? Take a message Martin, is the man who should take most of the credit, for it his work on the keys that paint most of the picture. Yet anyone who jumps to the conclusion that they are very similar to Chris Martin's band is missing the point entirely. Not only does Coldplay have guitarist Jon Buckland, Keane's vocalist Chaplin sings more in the region of say Fran Healy but ultimately has a voice that screams British Pop circa 1980s.

Opening with the U.K. hit 'Somewhere Only We Know', Keane kick things off like it is their fifth or sixth album. All this talk about knowing pathways like the back of their hands and getting old may make punters, oblivious to how new they are, go off in search for early albums that don't actually exist. Just as tight is second track 'This Is The Last Time' which, by the time it hits the last 45 seconds, Chaplin's vocals launch into the stratosphere and you start to wonder how the heck you're going to get back down to Earth again.

Actually, what will bring you back to Earth is the overdone 'We Might as Well Be Strangers'. One of the very few times Keane take the whole anthemic tune a step too far, you half expect a chorus line to chime in at any second with We would all go down together from Billy Joel's 'Goodnight Saigon'. But thankfully it isn't all 'lighters in the air' material. 'Sunshine' sounds like a moody Ian Brown solo number while 'Can't Stop Now' fuses the sly humour of Badly Drawn Boy with a mid-tempo Springsteen (and therefore Badly Drawn Boy) beat.

They cap off the album with 'Bedshaped', a reflective piece that seems to revisit the characters from the opening track, 'Somewhere Only We Know', ultimately giving the whole thing a sense of closure.

In Hopes and Fears, Keane have produced one of the most assured debut records in recent memory. However they won't be everyone's cup of tea, in fact if anything, they are the Anti-Darkness which already splits the record buying public in two. But when it comes to these rock heavyweights, pound for pound, they're no slouches.