Keane are back with a gap-filling EP before they release their fourth studio album. 'Night Train' picks up where the enjoyable 'Perfect Symmetry' left off - and although there's no single of 'Spiralling''s quality here, there's enough to deem it a success.

Keane have had an interesting career map to date. The trio originally started off as a band that picked up the trail of melodic, piano-based pop-rock that Coldplay had begun with their 2004 debut 'Hopes and Fears'. That quickly gave way to a rockier sound (and lead singer Tom Chaplin's much-publicised 'battle' with cocaine) on 'Under the Iron Sea', after which it seemed that the public had lost interest.

A reinvention of-sorts proved somewhat successful with 2008's 'Perfect Symmetry', though. An album that had more in common with Talk Talk and '80s synth-pop than Chris Martin and co., it displayed a previously-unheard facet of the Sussex band's canon.

Its follow-up is an 8-track EP recorded in various studios during their last world tour, although it's not the piecemeal nature of 'Night Train' that causes the most problems. For some reason, Keane decided to bring Somali rapper K'Naan on board for two tracks, while Japanese MC Tigarah guests on 'Ishin Densin'. It's only the Rocky theme-sampling 'Looking Back' that works out of these collaborations, though - the other two tracks sound like bad charity singles.

Elsewhere, it's not so bad. 'Back in Time' is an enjoyable synthfest that zips along like Bowie's 'Ashes to Ashes', Tim Rice-Oxley provides a surprisingly strong vocal on the languid '80s quirk of 'Your Love', and 'Clear Skies' ploughs an Empire of the Sun-like furrow with its warm acoustic uptempo strum. Best that this was a gap-filling EP, though - as the framework of an album, it has the makings of a probable disappointment.