Bloc Party: C/D?

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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

i feel like a bit of a lone voice, but after trying desperately hard to like it, i still think it is nowhere near as good as they promised. i made a comp for a friend of all the singles and b-sides just before the album got leaked and that is so much better than the album itself. there's too many pedestrian tracks that just seem to chug along at mid-tempo to nowhere.

i'm still waiting to have my epiphany and love it like everyone else, but at this point, it's 6/10 and no more.

― fsharp (fsharp), Thursday, 17 February 2005 22:53 (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?

i'll have to have a listen. you don't have any lyrics from it to hand?

i like this album a lot, but i can't help feeling that all the songs are melodically very very similar.

― shine headlights on me (electricsound), Friday, 18 February 2005 03:33 (nineteen years ago) link

it's a shame 'little thoughts' isn't on the album, it's very poppy compared to their other stuff but it's probably my second favourite song of theirs too

― shine headlights on me (electricsound), Friday, 18 February 2005 03:36 (nineteen years ago) link

Okay, now they're saying it's "American Kids," a song which has appeared on the Bloc Party site in snippet form for the last year.

― Johnny Fever (johnny fever), Friday, 18 February 2005 15:56 (nineteen years ago) link

Maybe I haven't given this album a fair hearing yet. But my initial reaction is yes it's OK but I really don't understand the massive hype these people are getting. Bloc Party is yet another retro rock band, not really advancing on what the post-punk bands of 25 years ago were doing.

― TCB, Monday, 21 February 2005 17:06 (nineteen years ago) link

I would like to formally disown any comments made to Alex Macpherson suggesting I thought Bloc Party were good. I was wrong.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Monday, 21 February 2005 18:16 (nineteen years ago) link

Bloc Party is yet another retro rock band, not really advancing on what the post-punk bands of 25 years ago were doing...except that being a contemporary interpretation of what was, Bloc Party's lyrics are more relevant to today's socio-political landscape and their production is glossier, cleaner, more dynamic.

― nader (nader), Monday, 21 February 2005 18:24 (nineteen years ago) link

The hidden track is three minutes of ambient guitar meandering and minimal piano - pretty is the word.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 09:27 (nineteen years ago) link

The Japanese CD has M83 and Four Tet remixes. That I downloaded yesterday. My Euro copy stops abruptly at 1m 20s of the last track (13). Is that how it should be?

― JoB (JoB), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 10:13 (nineteen years ago) link

I hope they don't all abruptly stop at 1m 20s of "Compliments" - the Euro edition's on its way from Amazon UK. (That latter bit rhymed.)

― Ain't Un-nice (nader), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 13:51 (nineteen years ago) link

these guys KILLED when i saw them live on sunday. beyond that, i have no interest in hearing this album.

― joseph (joseph), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 15:00 (nineteen years ago) link

I would like to formally disown any comments made to Alex Macpherson suggesting I thought Bloc Party were good. I was wrong.

Haaa ha! Those comments were slightly shocking, yes.

My housemate made me download the album for him, I tried listening to it and couldn't get past two songs.

― The Lex (The Lex), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 15:44 (nineteen years ago) link

I actually really like the first 3 songs or so, then it becomes a blur.

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 17:55 (nineteen years ago) link

"The Japanese CD has M83 and Four Tet remixes."

Oh, jesus.... what would I have to do to get those emailed to me?!? Or maybe you could You Sent It them?..... .. . . . . oh, sweet bearded baby jesus.. .. . .

― Bent Over at the Arclight, Tuesday, 22 February 2005 18:25 (nineteen years ago) link

"Haaa ha! Those comments were slightly shocking, yes."

I blame hearing what is probably the best song on the album at exceedingly low volume at 6am in the morning and thinking it sounded a bit like Bows. A proper listen confirmed that it doesn't really, while the rest of the album seemed like the most pro forma recitation of current post-punk revival power-moves that I've yet heard.

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 18:34 (nineteen years ago) link

Bows! Hey that reminds me Tim there's a new Music AM release about out, did you ever hear them? It was good to hear Luke Sutherland singing again.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 18:35 (nineteen years ago) link

What is it about these allegedly pro forma recitation[s] of current post-punk bands and artists that makes them so consistently and immediately polarizing and/or easily dismissed?

Is it the hype?

Is it because they're getting press when the artists from which their sound(s) derive(s) didn't tap into/have access to the marketing machines of yore?

― nader (nader), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 20:45 (nineteen years ago) link

I ask because, for example, Interpol seems to (have) elicit(ed) similar streams of love and/or hate.

― nader (nader), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 20:52 (nineteen years ago) link

For the record, I don't think they slot very neatly into the realm of rote repetition of post-punk moves, or anything. That's part of what I was trying to get at when I reviewed them: they seem to have a kind of Big Rock Band ambition that's a lot more modern, whereas bands like Interpol stick to the stripped-down eighth-note thing. Another way of putting this is that Bloc Party are more like late Bunnymen than early Bunnymen (I almost typed "Bummymen") -- they like to show you that they're good with their instruments, that they can write complicated little transitions, etc. It's almost a U2 quality. Part of it's just that, well, while most bands in this vein have to have guitars chugging along the chord sequence, Bloc Party can actually let the rhythm section carry everything and just use the guitars for complex color (always an Ambitious Rock move); most of it, though, comes in my opinion from their just being kind of unembarrassed about having Big Rock Band ambitions, as opposed to Stylish Scrappy Pop Group ones.

― nabiscothingy, Tuesday, 22 February 2005 21:02 (nineteen years ago) link

I agree with Nabisco here - what I hear in this record in an interest in texture and rhythm that's largely absent from most of their contemporaries. Listening to second half of Price of Gas or the build on So Here We Are, there's a sense of openness - I get the feeling that a record or two down the line other influences will seep in and take things on a different course, whereas I can't imagine The Strokes or Interpol ever making a record that deviates hugely from what they've already done.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Tuesday, 22 February 2005 22:09 (nineteen years ago) link

My problem with them is primarily that they make a fucking unlistenable tuneless racket.

― The Lex (The Lex), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 10:25 (nineteen years ago) link

I'm supposed to like them because they sound like late Bunnymen and U2?

― Jonathan Z. (Joanthan Z.), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 10:37 (nineteen years ago) link

Will their (very surprising) number one album spark a backlash??

Or did the backlash already exist?

― hobart paving (hobart paving), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 10:48 (nineteen years ago) link

I like the whole early 80's rip off thing, and the album would be fine without that whining vocalist.

― dmun, Wednesday, 23 February 2005 10:53 (nineteen years ago) link

Will their (very surprising) number one album spark a backlash?

It was number three...

― JoB (JoB), Wednesday, 23 February 2005 12:00 (nineteen years ago) link

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