It’s like you had a cool uncle back in the day and then lost touch and ran into him after almost two decades and he’s now the skeezy middle aged out of shape uncle but still wearing leather pants, still smoking and creepy trying to be relevant with teens.
Stop talking about yourself… in the future ;)
Bloc Party is the Klay Thompson of the indie scene. A sick ass prime but a very hit or miss second half of their career. Flashes of greatness show up now and again, but so do their misses…
Bloc Party is gonna go 0-10 just like Klay went 0 -10 in an elimination game (never forget)
“So Here We Are” is the audio equivalent of scoring 37 points in a quarter
Believe me, the rest of his career makes it easy to forget. With that being said, this song is definitely the equivalent of going 0-10 lmao
Kele’s lyricism has never evolved past that of a horny 20 year old and as a result I feel like their sound has never really matured. Silent Alarm is a 10/10 and A Weekend in the City is way more solid than a lot of people give it credit for, but their output beyond that is so mediocre that I don’t know how on earth this is the same band, just disappointing.
I think Intimacy and Four are really solid but once the original line-up dissolved the band regressed.
Definitely some really strong songs on both of those yeah, even if the albums maybe aren’t as solid too to bottom.
Honestly, Matt Tong’s drumming was my favourite part of their sound so losing that was a bummer.
I’m ride or die for Intimacy but on relisten I think it holds up way better than AWITC. Silent Alarm is a classic and Intimacy still sounds fresh to me in 2024 but AWITC is just kinda sappy and tries overly hard to be sentimental imo
Agreed, Silent Alarm and Intimacy are my two most listened albums from them. I sort of view AWITC as just silent alarm the sequel, but intimacy felt really fresh with the electronic elements.
Well, half the band left between 2012 - 2015. It was the bass player and drummer, but still.
Gordon and Matt really were half the band though. Not just in numbers, but the contribution of the bass and drumming to the overall songwriting on their first few releases can’t be understated. They are absolutely among the best at what they do among the indie of that era.
Base and drums were absolutely some of the strongest parts about silent alarm
I’d almost go as far as to say the strongest, and if anyone reading disagrees, just go toss on Positive Tension.
Yeah seriously, that album has some of my favourite pieces by a rhythm section
100% agree
She’s Hearing Voices 🤯
Obligatory plug for Algiers (Matt Tong’s current band), great band making great music
Truly glad he found his footing. Meanwhile, Gordon seems to have drifted from band to band without finding any long-term success. He deserves more recognition.
while i’m not denying the fact that matt and gordon played a massive role in the band, not even they could save a song with lyrics as poor as this let’s be serious….
To be clear, I wasn't trying to downplay their contributions in any way. I haven't liked the band since they left. The "but still" was sloppy because it's vague enough to mean anything, but I just meant it arguably wasn't as large of a change as the lead singer/face of the band leaving.
Heavy disagree with intimacy and four being “mediocre”. Maybe even Alpha Games. Besides that sure. But especially not those 2.
Alpha Games has some good tracks, but it's uneven AF and never approaches the icy heights of the first four albums.
It's mediocre.
Check out The High Life EP, though, it's very good and I was quite hopeful that it was a sign of things to come.
GUESS NOT, THOUGH... JOKE'S ON ME
The high life EP is okay
I found it much more consistent than Alpha Games, perhaps owing to its shorter length. Lyrically, it was much better. We're probably never going back to Silent Alarm caliber wordsmithing, but it definitely blew Alpha Games "meet me in the boom boom room" out of the water.
Yeah, the lyrics for traps were awful, I will agree on that
It's worse than that. Kele's lyricism devolved. The first two albums (and parts of the third) held poetry and wisdom beyond his years.
I genuinely don't understand what the fuck happened.
The only thing I can say, but only as a guess, is that these "aging sleazy party-boy" lyrics of the past ten years are really about him. They feel autobiographical at this point. Something must have changed inside of the man when he became rich and famous, and then something must have changed again as he realized who he was becoming and decided he didn't like it. That's what these lyrics are addressing. I mean, it's gotta be, right?
I think his solo stuff shows he can write good and interesting work if he wants to. The Waves Pt 1 is legitimately affecting and 2042 is ambitious and interesting, even if it's not always successful.
I have a suspicion that when writing for Bloc Party he feels pencilled into writing about things in a way that, for lack of a better word, feels "Bloc Party"-ish. I can't necessarily fault him for that either, when most attempts to evolve their sound after Silent Alarm were met with backlash from their fanbase and critics alike. When your attempts to evolve and experiment face the kind of backlash that A Weekend In The City and Intimacy did why not just paint by numbers and go back to giving the people what they say they want? Hell, Four wasn't really that well received at the time either, and then half the band fucking left! You're gonna go back to trying to evolve your sound on your fifth album (that is also technically your first)? Oh yeah, it's gonna work this time buddy (note: it did not).
After all that noise, stress, and the bombed experiments, why bother even exerting yourself for a crowd that's been booing you the majority of the set? Save the interesting stuff for your niche solo career free of the expectations of the generation-defining stone-cold classic debut album you and your friends wrote nearly 2 decades ago, while Bloc Party becomes a vehicle to fund the work you actually care about, running on the ghosts of expectations that failed to be met long ago. Might as well pump out Alpha Games (aka Bloc Party Back to Basics: Part Deux) and whatever this single (aka Ratchet: Part Deux) is building to, collect $200 as you pass "GO".
Or maybe Kele doesn't think any of that at all, I don't know the guy. His solo stuff is worth checking out, is what I'm getting at
That’s one way to kill a post Saltburn surge in interest
I'm speechless. What the fuck are they doing and what are those lyrics. Their worst song by a longshot. Could barely finish it. Wow.
I can’t believe how bad this is lol
Scratch that, I can based off their output the last ten years
Idk at least this one sounds like they’re trying I kind of like it
I mean I agree it's impressive how terrible the song is, it's impressive they managed to write a song like this
I wish they broke up after Silent Alarm.
another weekend in the city is a fantastic album, just as good as the first one. if you don’t like that though to listen to songs from the b-sides aka “another weekend in the city”, the lyrics on these are arguably better than silent alarm and the riffs are just as catchy
It's a time and place thing for me. Those first couple singles and then the SXSW performance were so incredibly exciting. Then Silent Alarm was released and it actually delivered on that promise. A Weekend in the City was a good album but nothing after the debut captured that same feeling. I won't disagree with you on the merits.
What they ought to do is take an entire year off to write the best songs they can possibly muster, hone them down to their bare essence in unrelenting rehearsals to make sure they're the best they can possibly be, and then hire Paul Epworth to produce the record. Ditch the "aging pervert party-boy" lyrics and get back to the poetry of their first decade. They've still got promise. Russell is still a great guitarist and the current drummer (Louise Bartle) is absolutely amazing -- different from Matt stylistically, but a virtuoso in her own right -- and they are completely wasting her talents.
They need another hit album. It doesn't need to surpass Silent Alarm. Hell, it doesn't even need to equal Silent Alarm. At this point, they literally just need to prove that they've still got it and are able to deliver a full album's worth of bangers without any asterisks or qualifiers.
It won't happen. I know it won't happen. You know it won't happen.
But that's what I'd do if I were them.
I think Bloc Party and I need to see other people
Is that not what Kele’s doing on this very song? 😅
I don’t wanna add to the pile on but good god where did things go wrong for these guys?
The good half of the band left and Kele’s lyrics somehow manage to keep getting worse and worse.
Definitely with Matt and Gordon leaving
Doesn’t this sound like 3 of their other songs since 2012?
Ratchet x The Love Within x Some shitty Hype Machine remix circa 2010
Totally Ratchet vibes. Same guitar effect
I’m really glad I saw this band live before the lineup changes because everything they’ve released since Four has been awe-inspiringly bad.
Ratchet was pretty fun - but I think only Matt had left by that point
Their last album would have had some solid tracks if anyone could get Kele to have mediocre lyrics instead of abhorrent ones. Not a fan of using AI to create art, but even the most generic AI lyrics would be an improvement from what he's produced the past decade
meet me in the boom boom room
and we can do what you like
lick lick lick lickety split SLURP
Talk dirTEEE to me.
He was still around for that song, I actually was there for its live debut. Seemed a lot more interesting at the time lol
Because it seemed like an anomaly. We had no way of knowing that it was a harbinger of things to come.
Aren’t the guitars in this basically just ratchet again?
Yeah, they're like Rachet's guitars with shittier effects
But it's missing the fantastic bass and fun vocal delivery that made Ratchet fun. If they're going to horrifically water down an earlier sound, Ratchet wouldn't be my choice
Imma be that guy who pops in to say that "aykshuwally" they have put out a handful of good songs since Four, although certainly nothing that approaches the icy heights of their glory days...
Exes, Paraiso, If We Get Caught, In Situ, Keep It Rolling, Blue.
Honorable mention to Only He Can Heal Me, which certainly does not feel like a Bloc Party song but, in my opinion, does work.
There are some hidden gems, but yes, most of it has been shit. Hymns in particular had only one great song (Exes), which is frankly pathetic.
This is like a parody song
Its allright. The lyrics are pretty piss poor. I wish Kele wrote like he does in his solo songs.
That’s what I don’t get. Kele is still an excellent lyricist, yet he actively chooses to sully his main band’s legacy with… this.
It can’t be as bad as everyone is saying it is…
…oh
42yo man singing about being ignored after texting his ex on valentine’s day and so doing cocaine and hooking up w strangers
It’s time for personal growth
He's writing from the POV of a character. Similarly, Alpha Games was sort of a concept album about flawed, despicable people in our more polarised post-2016 political/social landscape.
I agree this isn't a great song, but I just thought that was necessary context. This isn't autobiographical.
Exactly. Kele still writes some great personal stuff like on The Waves
He's writing from the POV of a character.
It's time to admit that these lyrics are 100% about him, or at least someone he used to be. It's approximately the 375th time he's written from the POV of this aging sleazy party-boy "character".
Wow. I feel attacked.
I really got into Bloc Party around two years ago. Guess this is what the fans felt when The Love Within dropped…
What...
The fuck.
not excited to listen to this at all but they definitely have had good songs on the last album and ep, even for how inconsistent they are. not like everything four onward is garbage, just most of it, and often their lead off singles are the worst of it
not excited to listen though lmao
probably their worst song ever
I remember when I thought Kele was going to be an all-time great.
It’s hard to square how I feel about Bloc Party’s music in the last 10 years against how powerfully I loved them circa 2004-2010.
It’s not a great feeling.
I loved Bloc Party and tolerated the increasingly worse output but my god everything they’ve done for a decade has been dogshit. Embarrassed to even mention their name to my friends.
Kele comes across noncy and weird in his latest music
Kele comes across noncy and weird in his latest music
He's the guy who hangs around the park wearing a trenchcoat even though it's 95 degrees out, hovering around the kids without actually talking to them, just scribbling frantically in his notebook as he watches intently for hours.
Agreed. I can't stand much, off anything after the second album
Bloc Party have been hot or cold since after the 3rd album. This is one of the cold ones 😬
this is absolutely one of the worst Bloc Party songs ive ever heard i deleted immediately after first listen, barely. Trash
Such a bummer where this band went. Silent Alarm is my favorite album of all time. And I love A Weekend In The City and Intimacy, but holy hell everything after that is hard to listen too. Besides a few decent tracks between then and now it's hard to believe this is the same band.
This might be the worst song I’ve ever heard in my life. I haven’t really been following Bloc Party over the last few years so I’m probably out of the loop, but I’m shocked.
You have not missed much. 7-8 decent tracks and a bunch of low-effort filler to pad out the running time. There have been definite bright spots and flashes of their prior brilliance, but they never lead anywhere and fail to build up any sort of momentum for the group. Lyrically, it's been an unmitigated coat-hanger abortion, although I must admit I did quite resonate with the song Exes, but that's literally it. One song in nine years managed to touch me.
Retirement is not enough, I need Kele in prison 😭😭😭
Silent Alarm is flawless and a 10/10, a classic album.
AWITC hit when it first came out but was never going to age well. They at least managed to mostly avoid the dreaded “NME sophomore slump”.
Intimacy received mixed reviews upon its release and hasn’t aged overly well either but I stand by my opinion that it has some of the bands most creative and melodically brilliant songs they’ve ever written. The production and mixing sounded incredible at the time, probably not the current production “style” these days and people/Gen Z would now probably find that album to sound too “sheeny” compared to 2024 indie. Imo if anything that album is underrated.
Four was an awful “post punk revival arena rock” style album that fell way short of the mark in terms of songwriting and sonically it all sounds so flat.
Everything since the third album has been utter crud. I get that the band is their source of income but man, talk about ruining your bands legacy…
Nah man four is great
Appropriate username.
Edit: Cells Shaped Like Stars is an old Bloc Party demo 😂
Intimacy is incredibly underrated for sure. People slept on it
Intimacy has always been my favorite of their albums. I think it’s criminally underrated, IMO it’s the Kid A/808’s and Heartbreak/Tusk etc of their discography and it’s only panned still to this day because their output afterwards never renewed the public opinion of the band. Intimacy still sounds unique to me to this day and I think holds up better than anything in their discography- Silent Alarm is a better album in the sense that it captured the genre and time period immaculately, but Intimacy IMO belongs to no musical zeitgeist if you will and AFAIC was the catalyst that opened the door to more experimentation in the indie genre afterwards. I encourage everyone to go back and listen to it again because I really think it sounds even better retrospectively
My hot take that almost no one else shares is A Weekend in the City is their best album. Those first two albums were really something special.
Edit: genuinely thought I'd get downvoted for this but pleasently surprised!
Agree — but wish they’d do a deluxe with all the outtakes, they had a whole other album.
Why would you get downvoted for stating that their second most acclaimed album is your personal favorite
I haven't kept up on the critical reappraisal I guess because when it came out A LOT of people were down on it.
Once Kele kicked out half the band, they went downhill. I wished they brought back the original lineup. Four was a decent album and the Nextwave sessions too. I think those were the last with the original band.
Did Kele kick Gordon and Matt?
Matt left due to exhaustion. Gordon was fired by Kele. There's no practical chance that either of them will come back. Matt is in a successful band where he seems much happier (Algiers) and Gordon's bridge was thoroughly burned after Kele insinuated (without basis) that he was fired due to cocaine abuse.
I don't hate this but I can understand why people hate it.
It's like an awkward stab at indie sleaze (complete with a totally outdated "Fuck the Pain Away" reference)... It might be understandable as an LCD Soundsystem or Klaxons single (okay, who was outside for Klaxons? Amazing band), you know, one of those kinds of bands. But it's just kind of different for Bloc Party.
I gotta chew on it some more.
I am thoroughly fed up with Kele's "sleaze phase". Outgrow it now. Move beyond it. Please, Kele, I'm begging you. You're a 42 year old father; write about that.
Irrelevant to this song, but I read the comments, and do people really think their last album (Alpha Games) was so bad? I enjoyed it a lot.
I thought it was pretty good. About a third of the tracks were stone-cold skips (sadly some of these were singles) but the rest ranged from “solid” to “just as good as the OG material”.
Honestly pretty much every album since Silent Alarm and AWITC has been going downhill for me. Silent Alarm is in my Top 5 favorite albums of all time.
💩
Jesus Christ.
Silent Alarm was incredible. Weekend in the City was great too.
This is bad.
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I never want to hear this song ever again.
The bit from 1:47 to 2:01, and again from 2:15 to 2:44, is decent enough. But the rest is genuinely awful
I had to double check this wasn’t just a remix of “The Love Within”
This song sounds like Ratchet. It’s not great. But no matter how I feel about Bloc Party these days I will always be super impressed by Russell.
That chorus and backing vocal 🤮
A pollution to the music industry.
It’s hard to square how I feel about Bloc Party’s music in the last 10 years against how powerfully I loved them circa 2004-2010.
It’s not a great feeling.