Tag Archives: a weekend in the city

#1247: Bloc Party – Song for Clay (Disappear Here)

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Been a long while since I listened through Bloc Party’s A Weekend in the City in full. I’ve got a physical copy of it sitting on the shelf upstairs in my room, the special edition that included ‘Flux’ after that song was released as a single way after the album’s original copies that excluded it. And back in those days, that’s really all I got albums for. Just so I could have easy access to the singles. ‘Song for Clay (Disappear Here)’ wasn’t released as one of those. After knowing all these years, I’ve thought it had the potential to be one. Instead it has the important role of being the album opener, introducing the themes that are to be explored throughout the rest of the record.

Kele Okereke’s voice is the very first thing you hear when that CD/record starts spinning, and I think it’s meant to be a bit of a symbolic choice. Weekend marked a change in Okereke’s vocal style where he wasn’t melodically yelping like he did on Silent Alarm, but properly singing from the diaphragm and stuff. It sort of began with ‘Two More Years’. But it’s on full show throughout the album. Maybe he got some vocal lessons in between the two album cycles. And even though he goes a little sharp on the second “I am tryiiiiing” and the falsetto he introduces is a little shaky, the delivery gets much more confident and in the bag when the rest of the band eventually enter the frame.

Bloc Party had a new, heavier sound to them, aided by the production of Jacknife Lee who makes the guitars of Okereke and Russell Lissack sound like industrial machines, which is a perfect match for the ominous “times of today” lyrical content. The narrator of the song is a person living in the East London of 2007, getting their fair share of action on the weekend, and not really enjoying anything of what they see and experience before them. Talk of ordering foie gras and eating it with complete disdain. Trying to look cool on a dancefloor by showing no emotion whatsoever. These are things that get the narrator down. And the drama of the lyrics are heightened by sinister backing vocals from Gordon Moakes and the overarching minor key-ness of the music. The song comes to a close, a loud ringing leads into the next song and the album continues. I’ll go back to A Weekend… one of these days. It’s easy to fall into the “Silent Alarm was the best and everything else was never as good” crowd. And the statement may even be true. But I at least need to check again.

#1058: Bloc Party – The Prayer

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I guess A Weekend in the City will always be seen as the not-as-good paler-in-comparison follow up to Silent Alarm, but when it was coming round to the release of Bloc Party’s second album in the first month of 2007, the anticipation and expectation couldn’t have been greater. Like the band had said in 2005, it was only two more years to hold on. Lo and behold, two years later – a new album was to come. ‘The Prayer’ was the first single, with its music video released in advance of the album’s arrival, and boy, do I remember that being repeated endlessly on MTV2 almost immediately. The band don’t do anything but sit around in some club. Only Kele Okereke gets up and walks about a little while the club-goers start distorting and all types of weird things start happening.

But none of the visuals mattered. What counted was that Bloc Party was back with this ‘new’ sound. It certainly made an impression with the 11-year-old kid I was. The huge boom-clap introduction was an ear-catcher from the moment it began, inspired by Busta Rhymes’ massive ‘Touch It’ single that would have been around while they were making the song. And then it’s followed by this ominous monk(?)-like humming which may also have a guitar buried underneath. Those are the main elements that lead into the verses in which Okereke takes on the persona of a man praying to the Lord above to give him the courage and strength to go out to the club and impress everyone he meets with his charm and his dance moves. The song’s page on Wikipedia says the track’s about drugs like ecstasy and Ketamine in nightclubs. It really isn’t. It’s about some guy who considers himself a bit of a lame-o during the working week that wants to be the main attraction when he’s on the dancefloor on the weekend. But I guess if you really wanted to think about it, the drug route is a possible way to go. Personally though, I’d say it’s the wrong way to go.

This song was a big one for Bloc Party. In the second week of its release, it got to number four in the UK singles chart and still remains to be their highest-charting single over here. For good reason too. Surely, the lyrics can be felt by any of those shy people who crave that sought-for recognition they believe they’re due, maybe even going so far as praying to help them obtain their success. You never know. It could be a desperate situation for people out there. Also, remember when I mentioned the producer Jacknife Lee in the post about Weezer’s ‘Pork and Beans’ a few days back? Well, he’s here again, managing to take the established presence of the band’s rhythm-section heavy dynamic and somehow making it even fatter. When those choruses arrive, they sound absolutely huge. Helps that the melodies throughout are just too good to not sing along to. God, it’s getting up to 20 years since this song’s been around. I mean, surely it was 2007 just a few years ago? Unlike a lot of music from around that time, ‘The Prayer’ does not sound as old as “20 years ago” may seem to be.

#583: Bloc Party – I Still Remember

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‘I Still Remember’ is the ninth track on Bloc Party’s second album A Weekend in the City, released in 2007, and was the LP’s second single. The album was the first one of theirs I ever got, for Christmas 2007 or my 13th birthday either one of the two, and was the special edition that included ‘Flux‘ in the tracklisting. I liked the song upon seeing its video on MTV2 UK for the first time, and my opinion on it hasn’t really changed – still sounds good now as it did back then. Crazy that it’s been eleven years, really.

Listening to this track now takes me back to about ten years ago when I was just about getting into first year of secondary school. Or at least nearing the end of it. Mainly because it was during those times that the music video for it was shown on TV quite frequently. Back then YouTube was still a baby in terms of being a company, and if a band released the video for their new song – you would actually have to wait and see it instead of having it ready at your fingertips.

The track has lead singer Kele Okereke reminiscing about good times and missed opportunities from his school days. Anyone who is a big fan of the guy and has looked on his Wikipedia page can find that he went to Ilford County High School. No lies, that’s the same secondary school I went to. Of course it was at different times, although I’ve always had the feeling that the person he’s singing about would have been someone he was friends with when he went there. Not just because it’s an all boys school, but because, if you watch the video closely you’ll notice that the train number all the action takes place in is ‘247’. A bus route with the same number runs through Barkingside High Street, which is pretty much right next to the school.

Though that’s just my theory. It’s probably a bit of a personal song for him so we’ll let it lie.

My iPod #555: Bloc Party – Hunting for Witches

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Kele Okereke was interested in the media reaction to the 9/11 and London 7/7 terrorist attacks. The lead singer of Bloc Party felt that the media had earned their trade through scaremongering and using fear to control people. His observations aided him to create “Hunting for Witches”, the second track on the band’s sophomore effort A Weekend in the City, released in 2007.

The violent ringing at the end of “Song for Clay (Disappear Here)” fades right into “Hunting for Witches”, but it is almost a minute into the latter that you hear Kele’s voice. The introduction starts with chopped-up radio samples that scatter around your ears before being overlapped by a panning alien-spaceship sounding guitar riff, the drums of Matt Tong, and finally the song’s spindly guitar riff delivered by Russell Lissack with dagger-sharp execution. The track reminds me a bit of “Helicopter” due to the interplay of guitars, particularly during the instrumental break before the final chorus, and the busy rhythm section, but with more of a processed sound and a fuller vocal performance from Okereke.

Released as the album’s third single, the song received a music video which features the band performing the track in a dark room. There it is above all of this. It probably would have been the last single too, had it not been for “Flux” which arrived a few months later.

My iPod #376: Bloc Party – Flux

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Bloc Party’s second album “A Weekend in the City” had been released and available to the public for almost a year when the group then decided to unveil the brand new standalone single “Flux”. It was one out of a bunch of others the band recorded after its set at the Reading and Leeds Festival. The song got so much love and success (reached number eight in the UK chart) that the band decided to release “A Weekend” again the following year, this time with “Flux” included as well as a bonus DVD showing the band’s performance at Reading. That’s the version I own. And I’m glad too. The album feels incomplete without the track, even if it wasn’t supposed to be on there in the first place.

If the album itself wasn’t a sign of Bloc Party’s increasing interest in dance music, then “Flux” certainly flaunted it. With a head bopping 4-4 beat with erratic high hats and electronic blips, the song features an auto-tuned Kele Okereke sings about a relationship going wrong, coming to a conclusion that the two involved must talk about their problems but for now they are in a state of uncertainty. Or flux, to simply put it.

Being about uncertainty in a relationship, it only made sense that the track was to be placed after the sentimental “I Still Remember”. Listening to these two tracks together equals a good time.