Perfect Symmetry

Keane produced the album themselves across four studios in three cities. Jon Brion produced You Haven't Told Me Anything, and Stuart Price produced Again and Again and Black Burning Heart. Rice-Oxley told Q early in 2008 that the record sounded like something from Bowie's Aladdin Sane, and Chaplin said they had looked to Bowie and Talking Heads. Rice-Oxley explained the title as the extremes of the human condition, with songs touching on terrorism, the love of power, celebrity culture and society's traditions. The cover photographs life-size sculptures of the band by the Korean artist Osang Gwon. Rice-Oxley said its pattern tied the album's theme of imperfect symmetry to the Bauhaus design ideas the band had come to love while recording in Berlin.

It went to number one in the UK and seven on the Billboard 200, and was certified platinum in the UK and gold in Ireland. Metacritic averages 64. Billboard heard giddy, 80s-inflected Brit pop, PopMatters' John Bergstrom found the band bold and jaded where they had once been naive, and NME gave it one star. Four singles came from it, including Spiralling, The Lovers Are Losing and the title track. In 2025 uDiscover called it the band's boldest artistic statement. Its first vinyl edition arrived for its tenth anniversary in 2018.