Record of the Week, 4/3/2012

A Weekend In The City – Bloc Party.

The other day I realised that, unlike the vast majority of the bands I was listening too at the start of my teenage years, Bloc Party still actually mean something too me. Even after their vast hiatus and stop-start release schedule they’re still a band I can listen too over and over again without getting bored.

A Weekend In The City is possibly my favourite Bloc Party album (I can practically hear people starting to moan about how Silent Alarm was better but hey, you can’t all have my perfect taste). It mixes the riff-tastic new wave sound of their debut (see ‘Song For Clay’ or ‘Uniform’) with a more expansive, open skyline sound that you might say reeks of ambition. This isn’t just a straight up indie-punk record, there are nods to electronic and dance music (‘The Prayer’) and the experimental themes of Silent Alarm’s last few tracks is taken even further. Lots of people moaned at the time of its release that apart from the ‘riff-tastic’ tracks mentioned above the monumental talent of Russell Lissack went criminally underused. Anyone who tries to argue that needs to give A Weekend In The City a real good listen because if you pay attention you’ll actually find that he’s all over the album, it’s simply that instead of melting your face the guitar is more focused on sneaking into your ears and grabbing you’re brain unawares. As ever the band’s rhythm section are tighter that Mick Jagger’s jeans circa 1960, driving the band forward with metronomic precision. I challenge anyone to listen to ‘The Prayer’ and not see where I’m coming from.

Yet at the same time it’s the album that marks Kele Okereke’s lyrical style shift to the frank, political and deeply personal. ‘The Second generation blues/Our points of view not listened too’ he spits on ‘Where is Home?’ while ‘Uniform’ sees his sights turned on mass consumerism and a lack of originality as he says ‘We have nothing at all to say…there was a sense of disappointment as we left the mall/All the young people looked the same’. Of course there are places when such directness doesn’t quite hit the spot (especially on ‘Waiting for the 7.18’, probably the album’s weakest track) but this is still an album with more to say that most bands manage within their career. Even on the album’s softer final third songs like ‘I Still Remember’ and ‘SRXT’ cover such a wide range of themes (suicide, homosexuality, love) that you can’t help but think that one day Kele is going to write a very good book because writing lyrics to songs probably won’t do enough to keep his inner soap box in check.

At the time it may have looked a little suspect, a case of over ambition and a band stretching themselves too far from a previous winning formula too soon. Looking back however I don’t think that is the case. Since 2007 a lot of things in the world have changed (musically and otherwise). Yet this is an album that still sounds musical fresh and expansive while containing lyrics and themes that have the power to make you stop and think next time one of its tracks comes up on shuffle.

Best Track: Too close to call, with the exception of ‘Waiting for the 7.18’ everything is pretty solid a worst and outstanding at best. ‘The Prayer’, ‘Where is Home?’ and ‘Hunting For Witches’ lead the pack.