Forget the Radiohead-replica release of Bloc Party’s third offering. Forget Silent Alarm and its hushed-yet-sonically-charged art rock. Forget A Weekend In The City’s geographically-challenged and lyrically-complex charms (foie gras at Les Trois Garçons, you over there?). Let Intimacy, the East London indie innovators’ third release, recline beside you, warm and fuzzy, in your spacious new double bed, just as you would a lover on a cold Michaelmas morning. Consider it something new, exciting and reassuring. Bloc Party stand unafraid amidst a battalion of predictable conformers, laying bare all their new armour. Stretching their sights far beyond the horizon of East London, Bloc Party cast their trident down upon indie-dom, sending tremors that extend further than Shoreditch’s slummy streets. And it ain’t all electro bips and bleeps like ‘Flux’ suggested. It’s quite possibly another concept album, in the vein of AWITC, which sees Bloc Party sharpen all their tools to carve out a lyrically and sonically superior sound. Less abstract than Silent Alarm, but more so than A Weekend In The City, Intimacy shapes up to be a higher affair, with Kele and co taking their sound up to the upper echelons of Mount Olympus. The album stands as catalogue of gods, with the majority of tracks named after Greek and Roman deities. This one’s not for the non-believers.
Opening clash ‘Ares’ heralds a celestial glimmer for a few seconds before charging in with typical rip-roaring BP guitars. Like a bugle-bearing soldier, Kele declares war, war, war, war on everything that sucks about the sanguineous streets of the Noughties. Invincible, arrogant and vicious, Kele incarnates today’s all-too-omnipresent teenage troublemaker. Russell and Kele beat their guitars down ‘til they screech with pain, lying semi-conscious on the floor. In no way endorsing the shameful behaviour of “true say blud”-spouting yoofs, Kele zooms in on the precarious state of 2008.
That’s not to say demagogue Okereke berates everything about Royal Britannia. He also lays bare his heart, sharing the pain of cancer-suffering friend/lover on ‘Biko’, and the wholeness of love in ‘Ion Square’ (“The space between us has disappeared/ You finish my, you finish my words for me”). Pure lust secretes from every pore in ‘Halo’, reminiscent of a dirty e.e. cummings poem. Unfortunately, Intimacy isn’t as straightforward as its album title implies. All the scurrilous sentiments of ‘Halo’ are scrubbed away with the bitter vitriol of ‘Trojan Horse’, with its scratchy guitars acting like two sparking fuses, all flickers of love fading out. A cul-de-sac relationship has never sounded so resentful while declaring “I still adore you”. ‘One Month Off’ proves that Intimacy really is the exact antithesis to the moniker’s meaning. It isn’t all hungover, strung-out, lazy Sundays in St Leonards, and watches-off sex. It’s a cheating play-off, sexual payback, rightful revenge, all to the sound of a fully-charged ‘Banquet’.
Kele seeks an answer for the unquestionably complex nature of love and relationships, exploring the religious side of life. The album’s polytheist concept suggests a struggle with spiritual identity, perfectly captured on ‘Zephyrus’, which sounds like Kele erupting through the doors of a church, mid-ceremony, armed with Big Beat sounds for hymn books. Choirs, organs and epic ecclesiastical chants resound, cold and hollow, wallowing in regretful repentance. Titular god Zephyr was notorious for his several wives, displaying the lack of closeness, immoderation and failure that Kele rebukes throughout his ten-track tirade. Beautiful oriental glockenspiel elevate a cortege of a friend/lover to a perfect paean in ‘Signs’, lauding the “statue statuesque” presence of a ghost.
Each track offers some exciting detail. The staccato keyboards of ‘Ion Square’, the lyrical crossovers throughout (dancing shoes ('The Prayer'), ravens ('Plans')), the vocal play in ‘Mercury’. What Bloc Party once were they are no more. The foursome’s evolution takes the recognizable concept of Intimacy and distorts it in a way that makes you want to push away any hint of love almost immediately, yet grasp it almost simultaneously with both hands, letting it seep into your life with all its evils and enjoyment. Album number three invites you to look a little deeper, beyond the glossy veneer of Love, Religion and Life. There’s a reason for everything; you just have to allow yourself to get a little more intimate.
No comments:
Post a Comment