A bit of unfashionable nostalgia here, but this is the first track off one of my favorite albums of the early 2000s. They're still around and apparently have a new album out called 4, but I haven't heard it. But the first album, Silent Alarm was a monster. Pretty much every song off the album kicked ass.
My review (from 2005!) of the album can be read here. But in case you're too lazy to go the link, here it is:
Like many of their contemporaries (and indeed, much of what passes for the popular end of non-mainstream music these days), Bloc Party are firmly derivative. And that's really another bigger story about why this is so. Why are the "hip" guitar-based bands of today, to the very last one, all copies of replicas of imitations of tributes?
So, really, in order
to properly evaluate Bloc Party,
you have to already begin from the assumption that what they
(and Franz Ferdinand, Art Brut, Radio 4, the Strokes, Clap
Your Hands Say Yeah, !!!, Arctic Monkeys and all these millions of
shitty
bands) are doing has been done, done, done before. Working within that
context, Bloc Party are pretty good. 
Appealing
to an '80s vision of high energy guitar-based pop, they write good
melodies and kick some ass, combining the two in a euphoric rush in
songs such as "Like Eating
Glass,"
the opening and best track on
this
album. The rest of the album really doesn't catch up after that, but it
doesn't get boring either; in song after song, they
steer
their muse from soft ballads to four-on-the-floor power pop wrapped in
catchy melodies and
the aspiration of saying something "deep" (which they don't).
But I really like them. They recreate a fond memory of some sort
of imagined nostalgia
without being too regressive and they do it quite well. I saw them in
concert on September 9, 2005 here in New York and they were
loud, the drums of "Like Eating Glass" reverberating
loudly through the auditorium. The whole show was a manic
pop thrill, guitars moving through speed and melody for an
hour-and-a-half.
If you like somewhat intelligent melodic power pop, pick
this up. As a sidenote, they had this album remixed by a number of
artists such as M83, Four Tet, and people like that.
According to some,
the remix album (Silent Alarm
Revisited) is as good if not better than the original
album.
My review (from 2005!) of the album can be read here. But in case you're too lazy to go the link, here it is:
Like many of their contemporaries (and indeed, much of what passes for the popular end of non-mainstream music these days), Bloc Party are firmly derivative. And that's really another bigger story about why this is so. Why are the "hip" guitar-based bands of today, to the very last one, all copies of replicas of imitations of tributes?
So, really, in order
to properly evaluate Bloc Party,
you have to already begin from the assumption that what they
(and Franz Ferdinand, Art Brut, Radio 4, the Strokes, Clap
Your Hands Say Yeah, !!!, Arctic Monkeys and all these millions of
shitty
bands) are doing has been done, done, done before. Working within that
context, Bloc Party are pretty good. Appealing
to an '80s vision of high energy guitar-based pop, they write good
melodies and kick some ass, combining the two in a euphoric rush in
songs such as "Like Eating
Glass,"
the opening and best track on
this
album. The rest of the album really doesn't catch up after that, but it
doesn't get boring either; in song after song, they
steer
their muse from soft ballads to four-on-the-floor power pop wrapped in
catchy melodies and
the aspiration of saying something "deep" (which they don't).
But I really like them. They recreate a fond memory of some sort
of imagined nostalgia
without being too regressive and they do it quite well. I saw them in
concert on September 9, 2005 here in New York and they were
loud, the drums of "Like Eating Glass" reverberating
loudly through the auditorium. The whole show was a manic
pop thrill, guitars moving through speed and melody for an
hour-and-a-half.
If you like somewhat intelligent melodic power pop, pick
this up. As a sidenote, they had this album remixed by a number of
artists such as M83, Four Tet, and people like that.
According to some,
the remix album (Silent Alarm
Revisited) is as good if not better than the original
album.
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