Hacking Cough

Well, I originally planned a diary, but I'm sick of hearing my own inconsequential whining, so I wouldn't wish it on Jeremy Kyle. So I thought I'd turn my hand to something else. Music journalism. Please enjoy my recap of the career of one of the 2000s most high-profile yet inconsistent musical combos.

BLOC PARTY

Bloc Party emerged in 2004 at the height of Franz-ism, unleashing a string of high-octane, melodic anthems fuelled by a sense of great urgency and driven by the frenzied rhythms of drummer Matt Tong, incorporating spiky guitar histronics, pumping basslines and Cure-esque yelping vocals courtesy of frontman Kele Okereke. Whilst contemporaries such as the idiotic Kaiser Chiefs were celebrating empty irony and attracting the kind of fanbase 'I Predict A Riot' sought to parody, BP seemed an artier, intelligent and pulsating antidote. Whilst the London quartet's obvious reference points were not uncommon for an upcoming band of their kind (the melancholic cinerama of Manic Street Preachers and The Smiths being two primary influences), BP's pallette appeared to draw from a far wider range of genre's than the usual UK indie-rock fare. The opening track of their 'Silent Alarm' debut 'Like Eating Glass' began with a breakbeat reminiscent of drum and bass, and 'Positive Tension' seemed to effortlessly incorporate dub influences into their soundscape without veering towards Hard-Fi territory, whilst the album's onslaught of singles such as 'Helicopter' and 'Banquet' ran like a particularly strong hits collection. Paul Epworth's production was engaging and extremely contemporary, infused with the kind of sonic detail usually reserved for fields such as electronica, acknowledging the ambience of Radiohead whilst hinting at a UK answer to Interpol with urban tendencies.

However, follow-up 'A Weekend In The City' proved an infuriating affair, aside from 'crunk-influenced' lead single 'The Prayer' and the charming, if generic 'I Still Remember', a tale of schoolboy affection which coincided with what sounded curiously like an outing from Okereke in the music press. Under the guidance of opinion dividing producer Jacknife Lee (Editors, U2, Kasabian), Tong's breakbeats remained intact in places, but jarred somehow against the heavily reverberated guitars of Russell Limmack, delusions of grandeur failing to mask Okereke's clunky lyrics, expansive textures sounding overblown and confused rather than spine-tingling or even memorable, particularly on the second half. Described as concept album about contemporary Britain, the lyrical displays on offer seemed cringworthy and pretentious ('I am trying to be heroic in an age of modernity'), their intended sincerity falling flat due to clumsy, earnest and unvarying execution. When coupled with unendearing quotes lifted from interviews around the time of release ('Everyone I know has had a line. But it's bad news for me because it can really damage your voice'), the whole scenario seemed limp and alienating, whilst experimental elements that had so excited at the time of their debut seemed wasted on clunky songs suffering from a noticeable lack of melody and hooks.

By the time non-album single 'Flux' dropped at the end of 2007 (later shoved into subsequent copies of 'AWITC'), the leading lights of the UK music scene had become something much further outside the field of traditional mainstream indie rock than they were in 2004, as the nation tired of sub-Libertines skiffle, previously charmed by the danceability of Franz Ferdinand but now requiring something more daring, Nu-Rave, or at least more experimental, mainstream guitar music was gathering momentum in the shape of band like the Klaxons and Foals, and the band responded with an almost guitar-less single. However, 'Flux' was characterised by a late 1990s trance-like backing, repetitive synth-line and highly-treated vocals which brought perhaps more cruel comparisions to 'Believe' by Cher than the band had envisaged. For a band whose sound had sounded so subtley cutting edge circa 2004-5, their new direction seemed little more than laughable, despite a memorable enough chorus and chart position of #8.

Nonetheless, with new single 'Mercury' Bloc Party may have surpassed themselves in their battle between ambition and integrity. As an instrumental, with it's Bjork-esque use of brass, 'Mercury' would have been an impresssive piece of work, but once again weak/absurd lyrical insights ('My Mercury's in retrograde...I'm sitting in Soho trying to stay drunk'), and Okereke's increasingly one-dimensional (now chopped-up, like a hapless Prefuse 73) vocal strains, BP unwittingly put forward an argument against experimentalism in rock. In the hands of a worthier band like Radiohead, whose 'In Rainbows' album married electronica and rock harmoniously, with a sense of universality which keeps their most widely cherished elements in place, such experimentation is a crucial part of their sound, and for more raucous contemporary acts such as Late of the Pier and These New Puritans an increasing pallette of sounds is cathartic and exciting. However, Bloc Party's discrepancy between experimentation and actual songwriting technique coupled with an increasingly questionable lyrical perspective means that the future perception of their post 2005 work seems shaky, and they may find their fanbase pleading for a return to angular guitars, epic choruses over contrived sonic experiments they can't quite pull off.

'Positive Tension'
'Mercury'

Testing, Testing

1,2,3.