The keener the Keane fan, the more bemused they must have felt at the first public airing of the band’s second album. According to early reports and internet gossip, Under the Iron Sea, released next month, marks a major departure from the trio’s debut. Descriptions of dark, eerie, angsty songs inspired by a near break-up last year suggested that Keane had done a Radiohead and swapped melody for experimentation.

Yet during an intimate, hour-long set of mostly new material, sonically the old Keane was very much in evidence. Pounding piano, glorious choruses and Tom Chaplin’s soaring vocals returned for ten tuneful tracks that had stadium potential. Relief all round.

The trio, however, haven’t just made Hopes and Fears Mark 2. The set opener The Iron Sea was a short, spooky instrumental that highlighted one of Keane’s new concerns — atmospherics. It was there in the denser construction of several songs, the pedal effects that mimicked guitars, Chaplin’s desolate delivery on the ballad Hamburg Song and the powerful Atlantic, and in lyrics that had definitely taken a turn for the darker. Often Chaplin seemed to be searching for the meaning of life after fame, while the lead single Is It Any Wonder? concerns post-Iraq War politics, although the singalong reception it got proved that Keane can wrap anything in catchy pop-rock.

The most remarkable change in a band often criticised for being a bit dull was their confidence on stage. Never much of a showman, Chaplin has developed a flair for the dramatic, inherited perhaps from a tour with U2.

During A Bad Dream he dropped to his knees and pretended to pray, crouched down to make contact with the crowd and raised his arms aloft during what you would have sworn was a squalling guitar solo had there been a guitar in sight. Only twice did he briefly stop to talk, towards the end of the set; a turnaround for a singer who used to thank the crowd for coming between almost every song. If at last Chaplin believes he’s really a rock star, albeit not the hotel-trashing type, it hasn’t done him any harm.

There was room for just three old numbers — former singles Everybody’s Changing, Bedshaped and Somewhere Only We Know. They were greeted with the loudest cheers of the night, but it won’t be long until several new songs take their place as favourites.