Bloc Party: C/D?

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Yay, me and Ned like the same thing (and it's not 20 years old).

― Johnny Fever (johnny fever), Monday, 14 February 2005 05:03 (nineteen years ago) link

Chuck Eddy also agrees! There is a groundswell here. (Listening to the new album and loving it.)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 14 February 2005 05:03 (nineteen years ago) link

Oh, that just makes it more weird.

― Johnny Fever (johnny fever), Monday, 14 February 2005 05:09 (nineteen years ago) link

The record is actually pretty good, but the New Order record probably means that I won't listen to it much (as they're in a similar vein for me). The drumming *is* great.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, 14 February 2005 05:30 (nineteen years ago) link

Yeah, when I heard the new album tonight I let myself listen closely to the drumming, there's some great stuff there.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 14 February 2005 07:04 (nineteen years ago) link

the drumming is indeed very good. and i think this album won't wear off as quickly as Franz' album did for me. not as instant hitting but better aging in time i think

― Rizz (Rizz), Monday, 14 February 2005 11:51 (nineteen years ago) link

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/review.php?ID=2746

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Monday, 14 February 2005 12:37 (nineteen years ago) link

fantastic review

i wish people in the press would stop comparing them to franz ferdinand

― Hari A$hur$t (Toaster), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:00 (nineteen years ago) link

i do like that they are much better than what i expected. 'So Here We Are' reminded me of a number of tracks and acts from '91 (but can't quite think who - that's a good thing tho).

― Alienus Quam Reproba (blueski), Monday, 14 February 2005 13:14 (nineteen years ago) link

It's Adorable. I swear.

― nabiscothingy, Monday, 14 February 2005 20:25 (nineteen years ago) link

This is no problem at all! (I think you are right though in that I was trying to remember who the hell the singer reminded me of.)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 14 February 2005 20:36 (nineteen years ago) link

It's Adorable. I swear.

but much better! (and i love the first Adorable LP)

― shine headlights on me (electricsound), Monday, 14 February 2005 23:33 (nineteen years ago) link

this is ok you guys!!!

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 00:05 (nineteen years ago) link

thank you, bloc party. i listened to your album all day and it kicked my ass. you're everything i pretended that the Futureheads were doing perfectly and everything that Interpol failed to do on Antics... but why oh why did my girlfriend say that you sounded... emo? She's wrong, right? I know she's wrong. Tell me she's wrong.

― poortheatre (poortheatre), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 05:41 (nineteen years ago) link

Well, she's not so much wrong as she's sorta not right.

Opinion of album = !!!!!!!

― David R. (popshots75`), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 05:44 (nineteen years ago) link

"so here we are" is pretty emo sounding--if only for that appegioed guitar line.

― robots in love (robotsinlove), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 08:20 (nineteen years ago) link

Yea, i listened to it twice more. There's a few instances where I think, "Shit. If that guy from Blink-182 was singing this, I'd hate it." Oh well. Good thing they're Britons.

― poortheatre (poortheatre), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 08:22 (nineteen years ago) link

I heart it.

― djdee2005 (djdee2005), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 08:25 (nineteen years ago) link

quality definitely declines in the late innings of silent alarm. but overall good!

― harshaw (jube), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 09:11 (nineteen years ago) link

Singles are hot but on lots of the other songs his voice sounds wack and I don't like it.

― LeCoq (LeCoq), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 09:31 (nineteen years ago) link

Yeah the last couple of tracks on Silent Alarm don't quite hold up to the rest but the dual guitar bit at the end of the Plans is great.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 13:44 (nineteen years ago) link

I love it too. Price of Gas, She's Hearing Voices, So Here We are, are highlights. And also "The Marshalls are Dead" - is this on the album? Dunno, cos I've always (well, for a few months), just had a 28 track compilation.

― paulhw (paulhw), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 14:25 (nineteen years ago) link

There's a few instances where I think, "Shit. If that guy from Blink-182 was singing this, I'd hate it."

Hahah -- a fellow writer friend down here was complaining about BP precisely because of a Blink-182 similarity. (He preferred the Futureheads, which I admit I've not yet heard.)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 14:45 (nineteen years ago) link

Wow, am I the only person that doesn't love this lot? I mean, I've tried listening to a few tracks and I'm just not getting what you're seeing here - they just seem ordinary. I'm not hating them, but I'm not in the least exicted by them either.

― hobart paving (hobart paving), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 16:00 (nineteen years ago) link

Watch the videos. Read the interviews. They're a really likeable band and once you're familiar with them, it adds a bit to the music itself.

― Johnny Fever (johnny fever), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 16:28 (nineteen years ago) link

I guess I'm avoiding them because all this hype smacks of desperation on the part of the British press.
They seem marginally less repellant than some of the other over-hyped British bands. But I'm yet to be grabbed by anything of theirs except the Phones Disco edit of "Banquet".

― TayBridge, Tuesday, 15 February 2005 21:36 (nineteen years ago) link

They're a really likeable band and once you're familiar with them, it adds a bit to the music itself.

This never does anything for me.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 21:38 (nineteen years ago) link

fantastic nitsuh!

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 21:39 (nineteen years ago) link

tht should obviously say 'nitsuh fantastic', sorry.

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 21:47 (nineteen years ago) link

Thanks, Cozen. Mixed reactions to that review have actually clarified to me what I was trying to get across with it: that this album is like audibly great and really well-made but can't quite get me to the point of getting super-enthusiastic about it; it's "just" a really well-made rock record.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 21:53 (nineteen years ago) link

Which, of course, is a perfectly great thing to be!

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 21:53 (nineteen years ago) link

better than me!

― cozen (Cozen), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 21:54 (nineteen years ago) link

But you're a really well-made rock record critic, Cozen!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 21:58 (nineteen years ago) link

Cozen has a more memorable personality than Bloc Party. (Which is okay, because Bloc Party are good enough not to need too much personality.)

Also, Ned, the other person their singer kinda sounds like sometimes -- weirdly -- is Colin Hay from Men at Work.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 22:01 (nineteen years ago) link

I think the epitome of the emo uneasiness I'm experiencing with the record is on track two or three where all the instrumentation drops and the lead singer squeals, "So fuckin' useless!" I mean, I don't mind it all that much-- it just sets off my Third Eye Blind sensors...

And "Price of Gas" kind of bugs me for some reason. Maybe I can't relate because I don't have a car (or live in Britain-- is it worse off there?), but I kind of want to say, "Yep... the price of gas is high...and?" It'd be like if I recorded a song called, "The Value of the Dollar" that went, "The dollar's getting weaker / The dollar's getting weaker... So fuckin' useless!

Otherwise, awesome record. Nabisco, I like your take: it's solid, but it doesn't have that, um, "urgency" or, er, "magic" that you get sense sometimes when you hear something fresh (the way I felt after I picked up Arcade Fire). That doesn't mean it's bad. The Stylus review pumped me up ("I belive in this!"), but it didn't last... It's still my favorite thing to come this year so far.

― poortheatre (poortheatre), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 22:16 (nineteen years ago) link

poortheatre, the price of gas is not in dollars! It is in blooooood.

That said, I like the song.

― mike h. (mike h.), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 22:39 (nineteen years ago) link

Re: that song I do really like the ambiguity of the “we’re gonna win this” cry.

― nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 22:57 (nineteen years ago) link

Paul McCartney had a song called "The Pound Is Sinking." (It's great.)

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 22:59 (nineteen years ago) link

(Seriously.)

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Tuesday, 15 February 2005 23:00 (nineteen years ago) link

It's... okay.

― Stupornaut (natepatrin), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 00:06 (nineteen years ago) link

(The album, I mean. I'm just starting to get burned out on anything remotely mid-'80s-UK-ish unless it has a murder-you-to-death 4/4.)

― Stupornaut (natepatrin), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 00:18 (nineteen years ago) link

I posted something about this in another thread, but the Bloc Party are playing in NYC this weekend for the Motherfucker Party they throw every holiday. I've never been, but it's apparently a good time.

― poortheatre (poortheatre), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 01:43 (nineteen years ago) link

better than that, ned!!!! < /hopeful>

― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 02:12 (nineteen years ago) link

Yowsa!

I'm just starting to get burned out on anything remotely mid-'80s-UK-ish

Trust me, Go West weren't all that.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 02:18 (nineteen years ago) link

Just finished listening to the album for the first time and I think it's great. I just think it's a shame that the drums sound so flabby - a bit more attack on the kick and snare particularly could make a huge improvement.

I'm not remotely to see that young Nedric likes it; 'cos what it probably reminds me of more than anything else is Pornography-era Cure.

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 13:15 (nineteen years ago) link

If anyone gives a toss, this is probably my joint favourite album of the year so far, together with Pork Chop Blue Around The Rind by Fast 'n' Bulbous.

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 13:18 (nineteen years ago) link

this album broke my cd drive, fact. I kinda irrationally hate the bloc party and their music now.

― cozen (Cozen), Wednesday, 16 February 2005 13:18 (nineteen years ago) link

Just found out there's a hidden track before "Like Eating Glass" on the V2 (UK/Euro) version of the disc. Anyone heard it yet?

― Johnny Fever (johnny fever), Thursday, 17 February 2005 22:29 (nineteen years ago) link

My guess would be that its Little Thoughts.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Thursday, 17 February 2005 22:39 (nineteen years ago) link

Nah, people on the Bloc Party LJ forum who'd be familiar with Little Thoughts have no idea what track this might be.

― Johnny Fever (johnny fever), Thursday, 17 February 2005 22:46 (nineteen years ago) link

Skipping 313 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

Ares and Mercury <3

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Sunday, 10 September 2023 14:03 (seven months ago) link

Setting Sun and Peek-a-Boo getting on very well in the late summer heat.

― you can see me from westbury white horse, Sunday, 10 September 2023 14:04 (seven months ago) link

five months pass...

you get sadder
the smarter you get
and it's a bore

― ivy., Monday, 12 February 2024 05:04 (two months ago) link

intimacy really became one of my favorite albums of all time in the last five months, lol

― ivy., Monday, 12 February 2024 05:06 (two months ago) link

wild that you bumped this today! I was thinking about and listening to Bloc Party yesterday

― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Monday, 12 February 2024 15:32 (two months ago) link

i think i've restated a million times itt why post-silent alarm bloc party doesn't "work" for me on the same level as silent alarm only to develop special and personal relationships with all of those records*. even four, which has no cohesion whatsoever but the songs are still really good

i listened to intimacy probably two or three times in college and found it hard to get past the brash and dissonant opening (i also think i heard it before "talons" was added to the tracklist, so crucial to the album's functioning), but now i love those songs, especially "ares," which seems to be running off the fumes of the apocalyptic stakes from weekend in the city, exuding so much cultural exhaustion there's nothing to do but to retreat into the interpersonal and intimate, thus the rest of the record. they also do such a good job of staking out the sonic parameters of the record, recognizably bloc party but manipulated and fragmented by machines, just as machines mediate the relationships that form and dissolve over the course of the record — i'm not sure any of the lyrics support this suggestion but the overwhelming vibe of the record to me is "sneaking a glance at your partner's texts and finding out more than you bargained for"

*og lineup only, tho who can say, can't see it happening but maybe catch me in five years repping hymns lol

― ivy., Monday, 12 February 2024 16:05 (two months ago) link

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