SERIOUS PARTY: On A Weekend in the City, Bloc Party favor contemporary politics over ’80s nostalgia. |
Bloc Party have gotta be one of the more misunderstood — or at least mislabeled — Brit exports of the past couple of years. In part, it was an accident of timing: Franz Ferdinand were unabashedly rummaging through ’80s leftovers for their stylish take on the new-wave ’80s over in the UK while the Killers were killing with something similar here in the US. And the underground was littered with also-rans — Radio 4, the Rapture, even the usually more organic indie songmaster Conor Oberst, with help from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner, toying with synths and other ’80s signifiers on Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (Saddle Creek). Yes, 2005 was the year of ’80s nostalgia, whether you were watching tongue-in-cheek reminiscences of the era on VH1 or listening to alternative radio. Even Gang of Four, one of the originals who had left punk guitars behind for new-wave electro dance beats in the actual ’80s, reunited to get a bit of the green that Radio 4 were so unabashedly accepting on behalf of all those bands who had come before they were even out of junior high school.
So it only made sense to toss Silent Alarm (Vice) in with the rest of the new-wave dance partiers — the British wing, if you will. After all, they used synths and heavily effected guitars, and when frontman Kele Okereke’s vocals didn’t recall those of a young Robert Smith, he at least seemed to have a hint of ’80s-era Peter Gabriel or the proto new wave of Bowie’s Major Tom. When Silent Alarm didn’t come on like gangbusters in the US, a perplexed Vice Records divvied various tracks up among new wavers like Ladytron, the more avant M83, and Four Tet, added a couple of acoustic tracks onto a bonus disc, and unleashed Silent Alarm Remixed, a desperate move that might have had an impact in dance clubs but didn’t do a lick to raise Bloc Party’s profile in the US.
The problem was that there were two Bloc Parties. One fit the neo-new-wave trend. So you can’t blame anyone for playing up that angle. But there was another party on Silent Alarm, one that had more to do with the political than with naked nostalgia. The Killers became the poster boys for the commercial wing of the new-wave revival here in the US with shiny happy songs like “Mr. Brightside,” and Franz Ferdinand set the stage for the Arctic Monkeys by just having a good time with borrowed riffs and a perfectly retro wardrobe. But Bloc Party had more than new-wave hooks on their minds. Beneath the ’80s sheen of Silent Alarm and the danceable grooves bolstered by the kind of sharp guitar hooks, thumping bass, and synth filler that remixers love to play around with, there were some dystopian lyrics that weren’t inclined to look on the bright side. In the midst of the new-wave explosion, Bloc Party aspired to inject a little substance into Silent Alarm — a little socio-political critique here, some anti-war ruminating there, and at least one tune, “Helicopter,” that was happy to indulge in Bush bashing. I missed most of that the first couple of times through the disc, having already been indoctrinated into the idea that Bloc Party had simply jumped the neo-new-wave train in hopes of a big payoff.
