Pitchfork

The English live on an island, have national radio, and they had the Smiths and the Stone Roses. As a result, they're less embarrassed than Americans to dream of indie guitar bands commanding decent audiences. That's part of what Bloc Party frontman Kele Okerere seems to have in mind when he describes this album as "Technicolor." He means it has big sound, big hooks, energetic performances, ambition-- all the things that make rock bands sound skilled and confident. He means no messing around, no interludes or experiments. He means the kind of guitar record where every song wants to be as tight as the singles; the kind that wants to be worth every penny any lawn-mowing pre-teen might spend on it. Because according to him, nobody makes that kind of record anymore.

That isn't true-- and the last thing anyone wants is for U2 to try harder-- but he has a point; it's no accident that there are people who think Radiohead haven't really delivered since The Bends. Put it like that, and what Bloc Party actually sound like drops pretty low on the list of things you need to know about Silent Alarm. What perhaps matters most is that they're trying to make one of those clean, consistent, ambitious Popular Guitar Rock albums-- and depending on how much stock you put in that kind of thing, they've done a great job of it. This is a solid, intelligent album that a lot of people will love-- one that'll slot onto indie-crossover CD racks right beside the debuts from Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, and the Futureheads.

Lead single "Banquet" is wonderfully tight and energetic-- the same kind of spiffy half-dancing rock as Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" or Duran Duran's "Planet Earth". That's easy to pull off when you've got a drummer this good, and a bassist that locks in with him so neatly, whether it's for rock charge or disco hustle. That, in fact, has been Bloc Party's main selling point, apart from the whole Remarkably Competent thing: When the rhythm section stretches its limbs, they leap a good distance away from the straight-ahead eighth-note riffing of the others in this game. Filter in their timely post-punk moves, Bunnymen gestures, and pop ambitions, and you start to feel like this is what it might have been like to listen to the Police or XTC in the early 80s; the sound of a straight-up rock band just a shade more sophisticated, and a little more interested in rhythm, than most of their peers.

And of course the opener, "Like Eating Glass", is even grander and snappier than "Banquet", as if to promise from the start that these guys take your purchase seriously. The songwriting is simple in style (forward rhythm, tidy hooks, guitars) but smart in detail-- all stops and starts, bridges and breakdowns, firework flourishes and tasteful studio tweaks. Even more striking are the precision and sheer good taste of the performances: It's not so easy to show off within the confines of songs this focused, but these guys seem to manage just fine.

So you get all the usual scrubbed-up gifts: the slower song, the slower song that turns into a faster one, the one with the studio effects, the one with the handclaps. A lot of this material is surprisingly scripted, as if someone spent whole nights in the practice space trying to get a two-bar guitar transition to work Just So. Okerere has a voice that's weirdly similar to the singer from the long-forgotten Adorable, with whom Bloc Party share a hell of a lot more than an appreciation for the Bunnymen: It's a vaguely-strangled back-of-throat thing that lets him moan and shout with refreshing gusto when the band gets going. (Typically ambitious topics of moaning: other people, culture war, girls and society and stuff.) The voice weakens a bit when he needs to croon, but crooning isn't really the point here. Bloc Party can be pretty, even sappy, but they're never looking to be atmospheric; they can rock, but they're never looking to whip up dark drama. This album charges happily down the center-- it shakes its hips now and then, and it whispers here and there, but it always seems to come back to tight and bouncy.

People will love this record. And so, inevitably, the people who don't love it will start complaining. And when they complain, they'll point out that this is just a regular-old rock album, full of all the current stylish rock-album tricks. And they'll be absolutely right; at worst, Bloc Party are like one of those people who are so well-groomed that it's hard to remember exactly what they look like. But really, a complaint like that misses something: Being a good ol' unchallenging rock band is this outfit's whole point-- and their biggest strength.

 

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