Album Review: Bloc Party's "Intimacy"

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Few bands in recent memory have tried to be everything to everyone quite like the British band, Bloc Party. They are signed to the uber-snarky house of irreverence that is Vice Records, and they make music with an earnestness that is practically Bono-like. They get underground noise-rock kings Mogwai to remix them, and then tour with widely derided emo drama queens Panic! At The Disco.

And on their new, rushed-to-digital-release album Intimacy, the group tries to literally split the difference between the dance floor-ready punk of the their debut, Silent Alarm, and the arena-ready balladry of its follow up, A Weekend In The City, by recruiting the producers of both albums (Paul Epworth and Jacknife Lee, respectively) to take the helm.

The result is predictably schizophrenic, but usually more thrilling than muddling. "Ares" kicks the set off with propulsive electronic siren-squeals and big beats that seem lifted directly from the Chemical Brothers’s hey-day, while the vocal distortions and cold, menacing keyboard lines on lead single ‘Mercury’ imply that the group has become fond of Southern rap production tricks.

And this might sound like an odd thing to say for a group that’s only been around for five years, but the dance-rock "Halo" and expansive ballad "Biko" sound like classic, don’t-fix-what-ain’t-broken Bloc Party, whereas "Signs" and "Trojan Horse" are collections of electronic effects in search of a memorable song. But even the less-cohesive tracks benefit from singer Kele Okereke’s empathy-soaked vocals.

While it’s admirable that the group is trying to expand its range, the sonic experiments only seem natural when they come tied to songs that play to the group’s strengths, namely huge choruses and club-destroying beats.
The fractured nature of mainstream music might prevent the group from attaining the huge audience their epic songs lust for (and deserve), but let’s hope they don’t settle for merely trying to appeal to as many niches as possible.
– Michael Tedder