British rockers Keane have landed the number one spot in Q Magazine’s annual poll.

The trio’s LP, their first since 2005’s Under The Iron Sea, topped Britain’s Q Magazine and Q Radio’s best releases of the year (08) list.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds came second, with U.K. electro-folk group Goldfrapp taking the third spot on the coveted poll.

Keane obviously have many fans amongst Q’s readers as earlier this year, their first two albums – Hopes and Fears and Under the Iron Sea – were voted into Q magazine’s Best British Albums Ever poll, sitting at number 13 and number eight respectively.

Q Magazine’s best releases of 2008 are:
1. Perfect Symmetry – Keane
2. Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
3. Supernature – Goldfrapp
4. Dig Out Your Soul – Oasis
5. Only By The Night – Kings of Leon
6. Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends – Coldplay
7. The Seldom Seen Kid – Elbow
8. Exotic Creatures of the Deep – Sparks
9. The Age of the Understatement – The Last Shadow Puppets
10. Accelerate – R.E.M (MJ/WN/ZN)

My dislike of Keane is well documented on this blog. I don’t know why I don’t like ‘em, but like Paul McCartney I have an irrational disliking of them.

But alright, they’ve changed their musical direction lately, so I figure – why not draw a line and try to listen to them with fresh ears?

In all honesty, I like what they’ve done with the styling around this latest album (Perfect Symmetry is the title track, by the way).

Alright, the heavy piano influence still remains, but something is imperceptibly different. “Maybe you feel it too?” Typically for Keane, it’s got that big, overproduced, stadium sound.

Perfect Symmetry seems to have some sort of big important question underneath all the glossy production. Is that it? Are Keane losing me because their message is obscured by the rather unpalatable music? I had kind of hoped that their change in direction would have helped me to connect to them. Alas, no.

In response to Tim Rice-Krispie’s lyric:”Maybe you feel it too?” No, I still don’t feel it. Maybe I’m not the only one.

‘A Bad Dream’ is inspired by a WB Yeats poem ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’, written about war from a soldier’s perspective. When I heard what the song was about, before actually listening to the track, I was expecting something extremely dire and depressing, but Keane, true to form have managed to impress once again.

The song is beautiful and powerful, without making me want to throw myself from the top of a building. It is thought provoking and intriguing, and as always the vocals of Tom Chaplin are astounding. Chaplin himself has referred to the song as “the best song we’ve ever written”. I think he might be right.