Tag Archives: bloc party

#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.

#1230: Bloc Party – So Here We Are

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I was around when Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm was the brand-new debut album released by the band….. 20 years ago. It creeps up on you, doesn’t it. It wasn’t like I was following the group’s every move, ’cause I was nine at the time and was probably thinking about cartoons and football more than anything else. But I knew of the band as I’d seen the video for ‘Helicopter’ on MTV2, months before the album was out. But as 2005 went on, it was difficult to go onto MTV again, or any other alternative music television channel for that matter, and not see Bloc Party in some sort of capacity.

Every site and streaming platform will tell you that the album was released on the 2nd February 2005, but at least in the UK it came out on Valentine’s Day. ‘So Here We Are’, released alongside ‘Positive Tension’ as a double A-side single, was the first track to be unveiled in the proper run up to Silent Alarm, two weeks before. And it’s a song that I completely missed initially. I remember seeing ‘Banquet’ and ‘The Pioneers’ on a much more frequent basis at that time. I’ve a feeling ‘Two More Years’ was even out as a single before I knew about ‘So Here We Are”s existence. But its video came on TV one day, I was thinking if it was a new song. It definitely wasn’t. But I ended up liking it all the same.

Even if this song were to be an instrumental piece, its effect would be just as strong. The twinkling arpeggiated guitar intro, which extends into the verses and beyond, between Kele Okereke and Russell Lissack is enough to put anyone into a kind of meditative trance. But what I’ve always found to be the highlight of it, along with many other Silent Alarm numbers, is drummer Matt Tong’s performance. Among the serene guitars comes this bustling source of rhythm that adds a huge rush of energy to the track. The drums sound like a loop of a sample or something, they’re done that well. The song has no chorus – made up more of one long verse and the coda – all of which concern how people feel after taking ectasy. And it’s during the coda that Okereke sings about having that MDMA-induced epiphany over a glorious solo. It’s beautiful stuff.

#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.

#1041: Bloc Party – Pioneers

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Only a minor point, but this track is labelled both ‘Pioneers’ or ‘The Pioneers’ depending on what issue of Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm you have. When the animated music video was getting its airtime on MTV2 back in the day, it was always shown as the former and that’s how I’ve always come to recognise. It’s probably not a note to even think about for more than a millisecond. But there are some people out there who would. Either way you look at it, it would still be the song talked about today, here and now.

I can sort of remember being alive and kicking in the Silent Alarm era. ‘Helicopter’ was the first track of the band’s that I witnessed I think in 2004, check out the post on that for more information, and then ‘Banquet’ came around some time after. Then eventually ‘Pioneers’ was released, and it was another great representative in the string of great singles that Bloc Party were coming out with at the time. Being nine years old going on ten, fair to say I wasn’t in the know of how well-acclaimed the whole album was by fans and critics alike. Thus the album wasn’t something I requested, for reasons I’m not really sure of, thinking about it now. But at the very least I knew that their singles were always good.

Kele Okereke sings in a range that I can only try to reach and does so from the moment he begins the first verse, never letting up until the calming bridge. If only the vocal melody wasn’t so catchy and memorable, it would put my cords under a lot less stress. Same applies to Matt Tong’s pounding drums, which never fully divert from the same tom-tom based pattern for the majority of the song. The title of the song doesn’t appear in the lyrics, but they very much intend to capture thoughts, feelings, beliefs and ideas that people may hold when setting out on an adventure, testing out a new theory or invention, heck, writing a new song. The lyrics detail the number of possibilities that can be taken into consideration, with the reassuring message that all you need is time to figure things out. They recount the overwhelming sensations that one can feel just by setting out on these creative endeavours. It’s a song of optimism and a sense of pride that as life goes on, these ambitious types will always be out there trying to follow in the footsteps of the great minds who have scratched their names into the fabric of time. There’s also a use of the phrase ‘so here we are’, which happens to be the title of another track from the same album. But that’s for another day.

#787: Bloc Party – Luno

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I didn’t listen to Silent Alarm in full until 2014. Why that is I’m not so sure, because I’d always liked (almost) every single that Bloc Party had released up until that point. When I eventually got around to it, bar the singles which are obvious high points from it, ‘Luno’ sounded immense right off the bat. The menacing bass and frantic drums from the start set a tempo and mood that can’t be found on another song on that record. Well, perhaps ‘Helicopter’. But even then, ‘Luno’ seems a lot darker in comparison.

It appears that the subject of a family dynamic of angsty rebellious teenager vs. confronting worrying parents is taken on this song from what I’ve seen. I was always busy singing along to it to really think on what it’s about. Plus, it’s quite hard to decipher anyway because of the changes of narrative voice. Thinking of it now, the teenager – who is the ‘Luno’ character – is tired of her parents and does whatever she wants. Typical teenager stuff. She comes back from a night out with a bloody nose and gets confronted by her parents, who then have those ‘where did we go wrong?’ moments and wish that things could back to when times were happier. It’s a song of anxiety, desperation and frustration, and those feelings are very much exuded from the ominous synthesizers, Okereke’s wails and the overall furious force of the song.

A lot of headbanging’s been done through the years to Matt Tong’s drumming performance on this one. There’s not one point on here where he plays a straight 4-4 rhythm without switching things up with a sudden strike on the high-hat or thunderous fills that build the track’s intensity. Even if you don’t admire the melody that much – I don’t see why you wouldn’t – you have to be in awe of the frenetic rhythms.