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.

Well, I was wrong. And I wasn’t about to make the same mistake with A Weekend in the City (Vice), Bloc Party’s brand new proper second album. It isn’t half as catchy as Silent Alarm, and that may prove its downfall. But it’s a coming-out party for Okereke, who’s either grown in leaps and bounds as a lyricist or just said the hell with moving units. Right off the bat, you sense a slight hangover from Silent Alarm. “I am trying to be heroic/In an age of modernity/I am trying to be heroic/And all around me history sinks,” Okereke sings on “Song for Clay (Disappear Here).” That may set the tone for the disc in terms of his bleak outlook. But by track two, “Hunting for Witches,” the rest of Bloc Party — guitarist Russell Lissack, bassist/singer Gordon Moakes, and drummer Matt Tong — seem to be doing their best to pre-empt any remix albums. Found sounds and sequences emerge only to drift into the backdrop as the drums skip along to a drum ’n’ bass–inflected beat. Sure, Okereke could be a bit more poetic and less obvious with a line like “1990s, optimistic as a teen/But now it’s terror, airplanes crash into towers/The Daily Mail says the enemy is among us/Taking our women and taking our jobs.” But at least he’s found the guts to tell it like it is. Every English songwriter with social critique on his mind has to write at least one song from down in the tube station, and in “Waiting for the 7:18” Okereke has his say as he wonders “Can I still kick a ball 100 yards?/Now we cling to bottles and memories of the past” while waiting for his train. This may not be the most poetic line, but it’s refreshing to hear him draw on what he sees going on around him.