Bloc Party: C/D?

kele needs to zing oasis using fewer syllables tbh

why?

so oasis can understand duh

fair enough.

i've got a copy of the zine he used to do at school if anyone's interested, iirc it's stuff about how the longpigs were great and oasis are rubbish, plus some stuff about my high school band that he was desperate to join but we wouldn't let him in haha who's laughing now eh oh wait

Haha amazing. Was it called Noir by any chance?

yes that's it, i was going to see how much i could get for it on ebay but never got round to it. it is, er, 'not great'

kinda weird that a dude that lives on the other side of the world has a window into my adolescence eh

This is why I'm glad my own adolescence is safely in the memory hole.

very wise!

anyway i always knew the guy would make it in the industry somehow but i reckoned on him being some record company apparatchik, not what has actually turned out :(

they are kind of 'heavy' now

heavier than a death of a hamster in the family

So Intimacy has grown on me a whole lot! I've heard they're working on a new record, I'm hoping it'll be stylistically more like Intimacy rather than Four.

guess what turrican

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe7uutnarWE

this song is so bad

oh they apparently shed their drummer and bassist, nothing to see here lol

incontrovertible proof as to why you should never go full Maroon 5

Yup, I've heard this already and indeed it is truly woeful.

the new bassist is from menomena im pretty sure

Matt Tong was always Bloc Party's mvp. Now he plays with Algiers, so he knows what's up.

There was a live set of theirs broadcast on the BBC Red Button only a couple of nights ago and showcasing the new line-up ('Bloc Party MKII', as Kele referred to it), and it was like watching a car crash pretty much. Really awful renditions of the older songs mixed with new material which felt completely sub-par. The new drummer replicated the old drummer's parts faithfully, and Kele looked as if he'd been working out a lot (he seems to be twice the size he was only a few years back) but there was really no sense of the new members actually giving the band a shot in the arm or a renewed sense of purpose or anything. It just felt like (and to me, was) Bloc Party doing Bloc Party badly with 50% of the original line-up, with Okereke dominating as per usual. I just wondered why they were even doing it, given that Kele has a solo career. Personnel wise, I can see them turning into The Smashing Pumpkins, with a revolving door of people coming and going with Kele Okereke dominating. Thing is, though, at least The Smashing Pumpkins can still make decent music.

It's genuinely astonishing how bad they are. It's not like I ever want to put the first album on any more but every subsequent record is just full of these comically terrible musical and lyrical decisions.

The Smashing Pumpkins can still make decent music.

Let's not get carried away.

I still think Intimacy is an underrated record, though, and probably their best after Silent Alarm - 'Signs' is one of the best things they ever did, IMO.

Let's not get carried away.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, October 12, 2015 7:06 PM (11 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm not! I thought Oceania was the best Pumpkins record for a very long time. I didn't like Zeitgeist and I wasn't fond of the last one, but Oceania at least showed that Billy could still come up with the goods when he wanted to.

This new Bloc Party track, though: dreadful. It doesn't seem to be much of a song to begin with, but I can't listen to that sliding synth part with a straight face at all. It sounds like someone who has never used a synth before getting off on just hammering the keys and playing with the pitch wheel and thinking "yeah, this sounds fucking great!" - No, no it does not.

Well, to be fair, that description would fit a lot of the very best synth music. But yeah, this song is pretty dreadful.

i think the second album is underrated & really if you think about, like, the 1975 and years & years was pretty ahead of its time in some respects as far as british pop/rock goes

('Bloc Party MKII', as Kele referred to it)

Please tell me he went all out and threw in a 'hope you like our new direction' comment on top of that.

Relistened to Four yesterday and it sounded better than I remember. This, though...yikes.

xpost:

Sadly not, although there was a bit of an awkward interview segment in the middle if I remember, where there were, I guess, meant to be questions from the audience, but only one audience member got to ask a question which was "which is your favourite Bloc Party song to perform live?" ... and Kele was all like "well, I guess it would be different for all of us", and thus went around the stage with the mic asking everyone on the stage what their favourite Bloc Party song was to perform live. It seemed like he was very keen to present the new line-up as a healthy, democratic unit. I think one of 'em said "I can't wait to perform the new stuff live" and Kele said "exciting times" with all the excitement of someone who wasn't particularly excited.

There was a trio of backing singers onstage too, if I remember.

I like this, it sounds a bit like some late 60s proto prog thing like Egg or Caravan?

I dunno, they are stuck between not being a 'heritage' act reuniting, and also not being a current hit band back after a sabbatical.

It wouldn't matter if the new album was a cough cough NEWORDER cough cough excuse me style return to form, the genpub kinda care how cold you are..

has there ever been a band so completely unaware of their own strengths or so keen to avoid them

this sounds so hilariously terrible on first listen that i really want to know what their thinking was behind it

i think the second album is underrated & really if you think about, like, the 1975 and years & years was pretty ahead of its time in some respects as far as british pop/rock goes

It's... nothing like those acts though?

Shit this is bad.

I loved that first album so much ten years ago (ten years!). And pretty much everything since has been disappointing, if not outright risible.

there's a vague similarity in terms of ambitions between A Weekend in the City and the 1975 i guess but the 1975 are more successful with it

"cain said to abel" is prob my fav bloc party song and i have no idea why it's a b-side, lots of miscalculation in this band's post-silent alarm career

Matt Tong was always Bloc Party's mvp. Now he plays with Algiers, so he knows what's up.
― Johnny Fever, Monday, 12 October 2015 19:00 (2 days ago) Permalink

Completely agree re: Matt's drumming, and was wondering where he'd show up. Thanks for that.

Yeah, Tong's drumming was one of the main reasons I became so enthusiastic about this band circa Silent Alarm. I recall hearing 'So Here We Are' for the first time, and thought that it was wonderful how the intro suggested that the track was going to be a certain way rhythmically, and then the drums kicked in and immediately changed the vibe of the whole track. I haven't listened to 'So Here We Are' for a long while, but just thinking about it, and then comparing it to that new track posted above, the gulf in quality between the two is beyond vast.

Completely agree re: Matt's drumming, and was wondering where he'd show up. Thanks for that.

the algiers album came out this year and is extremely good fyi

Matt doesn't drum on the album I think: he plays live with them. Assume he'll be on the next record.

When I saw BP on the Silent Alarm tour his drumming was the highlight. Just nuts.

xp yeah, he joined after the album. Should be fun to see them live going forward, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox68svCfm8k

If you thought The Love Within was bad, just wait until you hear this heap of dogshit.

Intro reminded me of Daft Punk's Instant Crush without all the good parts and then devolved into generic rubbish. What the heck happened to these guys? I was really pumped on their debut. Do they need more drugs or do they need to quit them or something?

What happened is their rhythm section bailed out and now Kele is making Russell stay and play guitar on his terrible new songs.

Jesus fucking christ, this new album is beyond terrible... fucking hell!