Under the Iron Sea by Keane

Under the Iron Sea, Keane's second album, came out on Island on 12 June 2006, and it's a moodier, stranger beast than Hopes and Fears. Keyboards still lead where other bands would put guitars, but now Tim Rice-Oxley's piano gets run through distortion and synthesizers creep in around the edges, while Richard Hughes pounds his kit like he means to leave dents. Tom Chaplin's big, clear voice still soars over it all, only now the weather has turned.

The band pitched it as a step on from the debut, with electronic touches and a darker, twisted fairy-tale mood, and "Is It Any Wonder?" is the one that rock radio kept. It went straight to number one in Britain, landed at number four on the Billboard 200 in America, and has sold more than three million copies around the world.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.