Album Review: Keep You Close dEUS

Belgium isn't a country readily associated with top-class experimental rock, but for the last 20 years (less a five-year hiatus at the beginning of this millennium) it has housed the routinely excellent but perennially overlooked dEUS, one of the finest indie bands to emerge from the European mainland in this period. On Keep You Close, the outfit's sixth album, dEUS keep their track record intact, crafting one of their finest pieces of work to date.

As always the brainchild of singer-songwriter Tom Barman – who along with keyboardist Klaas Janzoons is the only remaining foundation member – Keep You Close is a lush and sophisticated effort, beginning with the gorgeous strings underpinning the opening title track. dEUS have always seemed progressive and timeless and this trait remains, the music not rooted in the past, present or future, but just seeming to reflect Barman's idiosyncratic muse. His vocal delivery is, as always, assured and confident, delivering his treatises on age and change with a mesmerising conviction. On Dark Sets In and Twice (We Survive) he's joined on vocals by Afghan Whig Greg Dulli, and their vocal interplay on the latter is an album highlight. In fact Dulli's mere presence is telling because there's a lot of atmospheric similarities between his work and what dEUS have long been concocting on the other side of the world.

The album is less eclectic and more stylised than previous dEUS fare, and it won't claim the title of their best album – unless something drastic happens down the track that will always be 1996's In A Bar, Under The Sea – but Keep You Close is a fine addition to an already powerful canon.