Albums

Album Review: Bloc Party

[Album: Intimacy]
[Label: Wichita]

Coming off the back of the most successful year of the band’s career, that ended with the release of one of the year’s biggest indie dance tracks and the bands biggest UK tour to date, Bloc Party entered 2008 as one of the biggest rising bands in the world - their Last.FM stats tell the true story; you don’t achieve over 36 million plays just by a stroke of luck. If this latest album does not surpass the feats of the previous two and scale to the top spot in the charts, then I will give up my attempts to become an established music journalist here and now.

‘Intimacy’ is a hugely experimental third release for the London-based foursome who produced the performances of their lives at Reading and Leeds minus bassist Gordon Moakes. Prior to this performance, the album was released unto the world via their official website as a download for the mere price of £5, and £10 if you wished to pre-order the physical release CD, scheduled for October 24th, on top. You’d think that it would be a coincidence that the album was released prior to their Reading and Leeds performances and for that you may now accept the award for ‘The Most Gullible Individual In World History’.

It has been described by frontman Kele Okereke as ‘The Break-Up Album’ due to the fact that he wrote many of the songs about a bad break-up he had at the end of last year. Now, some of the best indie music has been written about break-ups in recent years - Arctics’ ‘505′, Killers’ ‘Mr. Brightside’, Hard-Fi’s ‘Better Do Better’, I could go on - but the point is, Kele’s trying to move the band in a seriously positive direction. Yes, music has been moving towards a more dance-driven state for a few years now but, the fact that Kele also supplied vocals for The Chemical Brothers’ ‘Believe’ would suggest he’d have to have some passion for dance music even before he’d begun to write ‘A Weekend In The City’, or maybe that’s just a coincidence as well.

“Now let’s get this party started”, is what should have been the first words ushered in by Kele on the opening track ‘Ares’, however they were in fact “War, war, war ,war“, exactly the same words being subconsciously screamed by the new hate fad surrounding the band post-’Mercury’. However, what is certain about this new experimental sound, is that it’s truly explosive, endlessly dynamic and ultimately, fucking brilliant.

Next up is new single ‘Mercury’ whose characteristic looping introduction is what all the fuss is about. Kele has said that this new release isn’t meant to be listened to sitting down and immersed in, but to be danced to. So with that spirit in mind, I’ve cracked a few glowsticks and am sitting in the dark with my 150mW green laser pumping sonic juice around my bedroom; now things are starting to really make sense. Yes, okay, nu-rave is deader than most of Michael Barrymore’s guests but, if I’m to really experience this first hand then, it has to be done.

Moving deeper into the LP there is a thunderous drive in the bass-line and riffs of ‘Halo’, that’s easily the most experimental track on the release, there’s a sister track to ‘Song For Clay’ within ‘Biko’ and an attempt to recreate the grimy rock of ‘Silent Alarm’ with ‘One Month Off’. However, the real power of this album is locked inside the eighth track ‘Zephyrus’; as the Greek god of the west wind you expect it to be a mellow track, however, it doesn’t live up to the idea of being gentle. On the contrary, it mimics the god’s greed and lust. “So let’s take this from the start, you’ll be me and I’ll be you” - think of ‘The Prayer’ being turned up to the max but spliced with the passion and core of ‘Like Eating Glass’ and you’re about a 1/3 of the way there. I went through a break-up last year as well so I can sympathise with how Kele felt when he wrote this song. Along with ‘Positive Tension’ from the debut, I can tell this track will become one of my favourite Bloc Party songs.

The only thing that is starting to worry me is that, even after the third album release, they still haven’t been able to compose a band defining, set closing monster track that will cement them as one of the best live bands in the country. The Arctics’ managed this at the first (’A Certain Romance’) and second (’If You Were There, Beware’) attempts. Many would suggest the soulful entity of ‘This Modern Love’ would suffice, yet songs of that nature are written and engineered as set intervals that break up the performance.

Bloc Party have truly jumped into the big league and are ready to become the band they always promised to be. Come 2010 and album number four should be a decade defining masterpiece, touching the Amazon Rainforest of course though.

For Fans Of: Radiohead, early-Chemical Brothers, Does It Offend You, Yeah?

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Bloc Party

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