BLOC PARTY – Intimacy (Polydor)
I can’t remember a band changing so much in such a short time as Bloc Party have between their scratchy indie debut and this all out dance album. I liked their first album for its hesitant indie pop, and while it may have been derivative in parts it was an enjoyable listen. I was dubious about getting Jacknife Lee in to produce their second, but to my amazement it turned out to be a huge improvement on the first. But this, I feel, has taken a step too far into the dance stylings of the single that started it all ‘Flux’. That might have been a nice little aberration to be filed away as an interesting experiment, but it received such glowing praise that the band have now made a whole album in the style, and the Bloc Party that I loved have gone. I am not averse to a bit of dance music now and then, and when fused with rock can sometimes create some stunning sounds, but the thing that I noticed almost immediately about this album is that there are hardly any tunes on it. ‘Ares’ starts off with some screeching guitar sounds and echo-laden drums, but the lyrics are just shouted over the top of the drums, and the guitar doesn’t show up again until the chorus. ‘Mercury’ is more of the same, with shouty chorus, and ‘Halo’ tries to bury everything in a barrage of guitars, but the first time that I hear the band that I loved is on ‘Biko’, with its unusual percussion and plaintive vocal, but at least there is a melody tucked away in there. ‘Trojan Horse’ is not too bad in a ‘chuck everything in the mix’ sort of way, and ‘Signs’ redeems the album for a while, although it would have been even better as an acoustic guitar/bass/drums piece. The best track on here by a mile is ‘One Month Off’, but it too little too late to save things, with ‘Zepherus’s drum machine and synths all sounding a bit dated, and ‘Better Than Heaven’ sounding too much like 80’s synth-pop. ‘Ion Square’ rounds off the album with a nod to BP of old – guitar/bass/drums and no gimmicks. Perhaps the band were trying just a little too hard to make an album that was different to the last two, but why mess with a winning formula – it’s not as if ‘A Weekend In The City’ was panned as being a substandard follow-up – and if this is the direction that they want to take in the future then I am afraid that I won’t be there with them.
Ares