The Verve, The Police, Rage Against The Machine… Hue And Cry?! It’s not quite the comeback on the the tip of everyone’s tongues this festival season, but our brothers across the border are apparently in raptures over ‘Open Soul’.

A second place on ITV’s grave-digging reality TV show Hit Me Baby One More Time - a show containing the bewilderingly famous Chesney Hawks, Cleopatra and 911 - set the ball rolling. A co-headline set to 25,000 at Glasgow’s Hogmany and a support slot with nu-jazz hobbit, Jamie Cullum, boded slightly more cause for encouragement and now the Kane Brothers complete their unremarkable comeback with ‘Open Soul’, an album seemingly homaging the exploits of that 1987, pop-soul Glasgow group… erm… Hue And Cry.

If a comeback has ever smelt of a crisp, Scottish £20 note, it is this one. Whilst album opener ‘Fireball’ and title track ‘Open Soul’, exude the band’s classic pop sound, that propelled the likes of Wet Wet Wet, Deacon Blue and themselves in the late 80s, they are an obvious attempt by the duo to appease their remaining fan base and return from their leftfield abyss that included turns at folk, jazz, drum and bass and even Nuyaican latin-funk, to their commercial popularity of albums ‘Seduced And Abandoned’ and ‘Remote.’

Whilst the brothers do seem to ditch their spell in jazz and classical that saw them drop off the radar during the 90s, they do have the ability to produce catchy pop songs and in ‘Heading For A Full’, their gutsiest effort on the album, and ‘Plan B’, which harks back to their melodic and soulful best of 1987, the brothers prove their ability to write captivating and fitful soul numbers. Snappy guitar riffs, and wailing trumpet solo’s, classic Hue And Cry clichés, mark a return that will be hailed by the die-hards and bemoaned by 2008s musical purveyor, wary of any comeback that doesn’t take the artist forward to new hidden depths.

Album ear-pricker, Beyonce cover ‘Crazy In Love’, is an obvious highlight, however, whilst the track has received the praise of the lady herself, it sounds rather like another Mark Ronson remake and lacks any real ability beyond putting a brass section over an already classic R’n’B song.

While ‘Open Soul’ is nothing original for the lads, it will be warmly received by the Hue And Cry faithful, largely just outside of Glasgow, and at least shows an ability to return to the commercial limelight with tuneful pop songs and an infuriating ability to make a foot tap. Lets just hope Marti Pellow doesn’t get any funny ideas.