Chapter 174: Silent Alarm!

Coming up, album review of Bloc Party’s 2005: Silent Alarm

 If there was a signage on the road, that said this way to philosophical ideas, love, war and democracy, it would lead to the Bloc Party studio. A studio where you’d find a bisexual negroid, an asian toy drummer and their fellow companions metting out arguments about government and love- opposite ends of a wide spectrum.

Despite the great disparity in the meaning behind their songs, Bloc Party manages to mesh them together almost seamlessly through the raving beats of Matt Tong, the distorted guitar and occasional melancholic chord inserted; otherwise an angry truce with the world exists.

“Like Eating Glass” paints the painful picture of love about how could beens were should beens were would beens, hitching rides on the train of guilt, repetitive lines breaking out: “Like drinking poison/like eating glass” places love in the spotlight and encapsulates its morbid beauty.

The songs in the album move from slow song, to fast song, to slow song, to slower song, to fast song accompanied by the proven combination of tidy hooks, rapid fire drum set and the album seems as if a person spent entire months scripting every move of the band- the album does sound predictable at times- but the transition from song to songs masks this and brings art rock the band displays to higher levels.

Kele Okerere serves more than to remind me of Joseph Obaje in my school but his voice is too unqiue, just a snippet of it would serve to jolt into your memory of a black man evoking emotions into his songs, thick lips, broken guitar and strumming guitar at hand.

This record will be loved by those searching from alternative rock to even those in search of an indie rock album. Oasis (one of the great british bands) had labelled Bloc Party “a group off University Challenge” a low budget idol-like show and only Bloc Party had balls enough to reply that Liam and Noel were pernicuous beings. Pfft whatever that means.

Anyone cool enough to take Oasis head on is cool enough for me and I guess for you as well. Listen to this album if you need to move your head to drum beats and sing along notes ringing through his thick black lips. Like eating poison, like eating glass.

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