Bloc Party: C/D?

:D

it sucks bc at least half of four is great imo

In terms of the sheer gulf between aspiration and achivement he is probably the single worst British lyricist of the last decade, and that's really saying something.

OK I'm listening to the whole thing now, skipping the first song which we all already know is dogshit.

Why. Does. He. Feel. The. Need. To. Stop. Bet. Ween. Eve. Ry. Syll. A. Ble. He. Sings?

It was bad enough when he stole an unreleased Richey Manic line for 'Where Is Home?' ("I want to cut off the feet off every ballerina") or the "eat your cancer" line from 'Heart Shaped Box'... on this one, he steals/rearranges the "we take the pills to find each other" line from Suede's 'New Generation'

I'm on track three and it's like this is supposed to be some sort of Jamie Woon-James Blake coffee table dubsoul thing, but he doesn't have voice of the former and the even rudimentary production skills of the latter.

Fourth track is the sort of clumpy midpaced twangy rocker that you expect from bands with no ideas left.

Every day is a repeat
Like a carrier bag stuck in a tree
I used to find my answers
In the gospels of St. John
But now I find them at the bottom
Of this shot glass

"so real" is ok

"the good news" is like who invited this band to become black rebel motorcycle club

The music to Fortress is even worse than the lyrics, unsurprising limp dick James Blake sex-ballad.

Also Kele Okerere is a man in his mid-30s using 'sex' as a verb.

wow i could be listening to the entire years & years album instead of "fortress"

Different Drugs is actually... pretty good, in that I've not found myself immediately compelled to turn it off. Would be way better with Katy or Jessie singing it obviously, and sometimes you really do need to ditch the drummer. I like the bit where he sings "do you still think of me fondly?" like he's addressing some maiden aunt he never really sees.

"different drugs" IS good. would've fit on a weekend in the city

Into The Earth reminds me of something, wacky 1999-ish West Coast types in Hawaiian shirts/too baggy trousers/stupid thick ties. Or maybe just the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

jeez it's kinda stunning how much "different drugs" towers over everything else i've heard on this record

i think i'd have preferred it if this record were entirely bad tbh

didn't need a brief glimpse of kele's few remaining good sensibilities

Shitting hell quoting Robyn S like that is just indefensible.

This sounds like the kind of record a band releases before they finally admit the game is up and piss off.

I order the lobster, and you, the Moët
The waitress thinks that we can't pay, no
What does she know? Our pockets are full-grown
And we've earned the right to fine dine

The rhyme of Moet with pay is worthy of Rakim in his prime.

The music got too shit for me to possibly carry on but I cannot imagine any record company agreeing to release that if it hadn't come from a band who have already sold however many million albums.

Yup, totally agree. This is quite comfortably the worst new album I've heard so far this year, actually... I know we're only a couple of months in, but still!

i always thought BP the band were better than kele on the whole. but these lyrics really make me want to listen to the new one.

New single played on 6music as we drove to work. As it finished Em said simply "That was shit. What happened to them?"

this might all explain is why kele looks so unhappy/pissed off in all their recent publicity shots.

He is also now absolutely MASSIVE, like he's been pumping steroids and sacks of satsumas straight into his muscles. I'm always slightly suspicious of people who bulk up like that.

he sounded like hes been having a bit of an ongoing personal/identity crisis in that NME interview, which might be related to his new beefiness.

i think different drugs is meant to be his unfinished symphony, the phrasing is very similar to shara nelson.

fortress is good actually. prob his best, most tender singing on this album from what ive heard so far (im not really listening to the lyrics, which might help). its a tiny bit like fka twigs' closer. is his solo stuff like this? i think i might like it more than the BP album if so.

the other guy from the original line up has gone kind beefy as well, he used to be a super-scrawny pencil neck indie kid

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-b3gDjVR8bTc/UPkLaq983RI/AAAAAAAAFu8/NfSF2KFBEjg/s400/2+Bloc+straight+cream.jpg

http://cdn.pitchfork.com/news/59763/a6d59e64.jpg

(he's the one on the far right in both pictures)

wait, second from the right in the first picture

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcEsqSr0jG0

Oh ffs what even is this band anymore

A band that's completely over, yet they still keep on going...

Any thoughts on Kele's _Fatherland_? Has a real nice streak from tracks 6-10 (less 7). "Yemaya", track 6, has a Shack musical vibe that I love, but it's also very much the album's highpoint for me, though the track with Corinne Bailey Rae (# 8, "Versions of Us") is lovely.

there you go-go
looking like a snack
cute like bambi
meet me in the boom boom room

intimacy sounds great today

Their best

fuck, are you right????

no way!!! half is good-to-great but the other half is mediocre-to-'wtf were they thinking'

Could barely make it through one listen of this album. Such a huge fall off from Silent Alarm to Weekend in the City to this

possible that "talons," "better than heaven," and "ion square" (plus "letter to my son") are tricking me into thinking this but... those songs are sooooo good

yeah those tracks (and "trojan horse" and "signs") are all very good but still like, what the fuck is "mercury", what the fuck is "ares", why does "one month off" sound like a very weird remix of "banquet" and so on

Ares and Mercury <3

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

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

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

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

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