Cause And Effect, the long-awaited follow-up to 2012’s Strangeland, sees the much-acclaimed English alternative-rock outfit Keane returning after a five-year hiatus. The birth of this new album came as something of a surprise even to the band. Produced by David Kosten, the 11-track offering is informed by ageing, but also in the depth of friendship between Tom Chaplin and Tim Rice-Oxley. Chaplin had released two successful solo albums but missed his old sparring partner Rice-Oxley. “I found myself wondering how I had come to let this very enigmatic and important relationship in my life drift,” Tom says. Meanwhile Tim had written an album’s worth of incredibly personal songs fueled by humor as well as pain. When Tom, bassist Jesse Quin and drummer Richard Hughes heard the songs, they were immediately drawn to them both sonically and lyrically. “Hopes and Fears was a break-up album too, but it was about a break-up when I was 19,” Rice-Oxley explains. “It’s a bit different when you’re older and you’ve got kids – your whole little world shifts on its axis.”