Bloc Party

Back when Bloc Party released their debut album, few people really understood what they were about. It was 2005, and for a while there'd been a lot of talk about the "return of rock". Let's say since 2002-2003. As if before that moment Queens Of The Stone Age and Muse, System Of A Down or At The Drive-In had been playing, I don't know, mazurkas. Either way, that was the framework everyone tended to slot things into, without bothering too much to distinguish between scruffy garage-rockers and the new wave shoots. The Vines and the White Stripes, the Hives and the Libertines, the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were hailed as standard-bearers of a new sound rooted in revivalism, but with a youthful edge that was supposedly going to make it tower over the leftovers of grunge, the post-Britpop hangover and (in a decidedly unrealistic view of the music market) pretty much everything else the pop landscape had on offer.

So when the four Londoners started putting out their first records (the "Bloc Party" EP in 2004 and a healthy stack of singles, mostly later folded into the debut LP), it seemed only natural to lump them in with everyone else in the nu wave bin. Either with enthusiasm (the New Musical Express put them top of its 2005 picks) or with a certain haughtiness – come on then, get a move on: acts like the Strokes and Franz Ferdinand, not to mention Interpol, the Kills or the Rapture, had already been around for a while, and the coolness of reviving old post-punk sounds was starting to look a bit faded.

That's the reception Kele Okereke, Matt Tong, Russell Lissack and Gordon Moakes got: a mix of popularity and snobbery that also greeted other late-comers who went on to become emblematic of their genre – Genesis and Talk Talk, Blink-182, Linkin Park. In their case, the readings were especially sloppy. The Guardian treated them as a less sexy, less funky Franz Ferdinand ("but with a touch of early Cure"), the Independent claimed the album "could have been recorded in 1985" (while also comparing it to the emo of Thursday). More in tune with the hype around the band, Mojo likened the sound to Joy Division and Killing Joke and called the album "remarkable – if imperfect". Pitchfork did a bit better ("this is what listening to the Police or XTC in the early Eighties might have sounded like"), and so did the NME, with eclectic yet almost prescient references to Prince, Kate Bush and the Manic Street Preachers of "The Holy Bible". The sharpest take, at least in hindsight, was probably Stylus's, which brought in the Buzzcocks and Radiohead, Long Fin Killie and New Order, Disco Inferno ("before they got hold of a sampler"), and Gang Of Four.

Unfortunately, only the "Gang Of Four" reference really stuck, and for a long time the nu wave crowd's view of the band was confined to the narrow range between "decent clones" and "pale clones" of the punk-funk champions. Not that the comparison was off-base – whatever the Guardian might say, Bloc Party were without question the most rhythmically adventurous act in the scene they'd been lumped into – but framing them as pure revivalists was undeniably limiting. Seen merely as sparky re-enactors of the early-Thatcher vibe, they really weren't anything special. The point is, they were more than that.

Some fans picked up on it. Whether they grasped why, though, is another question. Looking back on it now – hard to believe, but eighteen years have gone by! – it's easier to spot the signs of what was to come, and of the singularity that would later lead Vibe Music, in a piece of sponsored content, to call "Silent Alarm" "the most important album of its generation".

Geometry and grandeur

Opening "Like Eating Glass" — and the whole album — is a searing loop from Russell Lissack's guitar, to which layer upon layer is added: tremolo guitar, cymbals (opening up more and more), kick and snare. When frontman Kele Okereke's main guitar riff finally kicks in, the sound has already mutated from skeletal to larger than life. Forget Joy Division and the rest of the late-Seventies crowd: not even a minute has passed, and we're already at U2 and Simple Minds territory. But the construction keeps building. Here comes Okereke's voice, urgent, enveloping. And Gordon Moakes' bass, which waits for the second verse (incidentally: totally different from the first!) before climbing a line that is effectively a second melody and a second rhythm, wedged halfway between the vocals and Matt Tong's broken beats. The opening theme returns, the drums start seeking new evolutions and open onto a centrifugal break — a triple coordinated bass-and-drum hit and everything resynchronizes. A machine. A puzzle. On the chorus (if it's even fair to call it that) the rhythm turns squarer, while the sound grows more expansive at the same time: it's the moment to release the accumulated tension, letting it burst out in the instrumental passages before condensing again in the closing coda, almost entirely guitar and voice. They only stop short of calling it a suite because it barely runs past four minutes.

"Helicopter", the first single to break into the UK top 30, in November 2004, pushes the interlocking parts and frenzy even further. A barrage of stop'n'go moves that leaps from the spikiest indie-rock to off-beat sections just a step away from Madness. And, once again, it closes on a cathedral of effects and layered guitars that, more than any legitimate eighties comparison, brings to mind Explosions In The Sky and their soft/loud school.

But sharp edges and layering are the geometric quintessence of the whole album. They emerge irresistibly in the call-and-response of "Banquet" (platinum-certified in the UK and the band's most streamed track on the major platforms), and they take over in the impetuous crescendo of "She's Hearing Voices", exploding into a zigzagging, incendiary solo. They press forward in "Price Of Gasoline", stacking handclaps, percussive bass, stabs of rhythm guitar and drum patterns constantly ahead of the beat.

Powered by an irrepressible dance impulse, and a mastery of jagged shifts that would make plenty of math-rock musicians envious, Bloc Party conjure up a brand-new, recombinant formula: it grabs New Order's obsession with dazzling beats and layer-on-layer构建 constructions, hybridizes it with the deconstructionist attitude of Xtc's "Making Plans For Nigel", and turns the whole thing into the foundation for new, unexpected guitar-rock possibilities.

The critics were slow to catch on, but the British musical underground was quicker to seize the idea. Before long, the scene would be teeming with bands whose quid lay in an elusive, progressively-minded strain of indie/dance/punk. The early days of Foals and These New Puritans, but also the danceable math-rock of ¡Forward, Russia! and the Irish band Bats, or the decidedly poppier version from the whimsical Hot Club De Paris and the rougher Tubelord. At the same time, outlets like NME started championing the kaleidoscopic nu rave of Klaxons and Late Of The Pier, whose lineage from Bloc Party was already clear even before bands like Delphic, Friendly Fires and Australia's Cut Copy made the connection explicit. By the turn of the decade, these styles would converge into the disruptive proposition of Everything Everything — and at that point, few could have denied the birth of a new strain of progressive pop (there's even a dedicated term for it these days: jigsaw-pop). But if you knew where to look, the seeds were all already there in "Silent Alarm". And on closer inspection, it was more than just seeds.

"To dance, and to think"

Some of the album's posthumous celebrations, however, have to do with another, more poetic, more generational element. "'Silent Alarm' is one of the most deeply layered and considered albums of its era", notes Vibe Music's sponsored content, underlining just how exceptional it was compared to most of its nu-wave and garage-rock contemporaries. The Interns' review for the album's tenth anniversary argues: "'Silent Alarm' dealt with themes like sleep deprivation, consumption and love. It's never derogatory, nor does it boast about negative behaviour. You won't hear anything that needs to be shouted through a megaphone; on the contrary, everything is delicately subtle. Okereke is gay, but love is treated simply as love. None of the lyrics confine these issues to one specific type of person".

"She's Hearing Voices" portrays, with detachment, the behaviour of someone suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, withholding judgment (while quoting Hemingway's "For Whom The Bell Tolls" in the line "Did the earth, did the earth not move?"), before jumping into the first person for the finale: "I'm walking on eggshells/ Walking on glass/ Burnt by the mirror, burnt by the light/ Feeling rejection, I'll burn down your house/ Tearing down posters, I was never, never alive". "Positive Tension", meanwhile, centres on existential boredom, the desire to escape it through something unforgettable, and the frustration that the chance to do so never comes: "Things replace things/ Days replace days/ Things replace things [...] Run, run, run, run, run, run/ Something glorious is about to happen [...] Why'd you have to get so hysterical? / Why'd you have to get so fucking useless?".

Other songs, like "The Pioneers" and "So Here We Are", explore more positive feelings, but always with a bitter aftertaste. The former sounds like an optimistic anthem to the possibility of solving any problematic situation ("If it can be broken then it can be fixed/ If it can be fused then it can be split [...] All you need is time, all you need is time") but reveals its disillusionment in the chorus ("We promised the world we'd tame it/ What were we hoping for?"); the latter hides, beneath positive imagery, the story of ecstasy wearing off, and the fading, upon "returning to the world", of the deceptive sense of illumination ("I caught a glimpse/ But it's been forgotten/ So here we are, again").

The author of all the lyrics, Okereke explained to Pitchfork in 2005: "I think the whole point of the album is about teenagers. [...] One thing I experienced first-hand was Western adolescent selfishness. In the West, you're led to believe you're the centre of the universe. [...] There's nothing to believe in, when you're a teenager". Among his writing models were Thom Yorke and Björk, but during his years at King's College London studying English literature, the singer had developed a passion for the poet Anne Sexton and other exponents of American "confessional poetry" of the 1950s and Sixties — one of the earliest forms of literary postmodernism, centred on the connection between individual experience and broader social themes, viewed through a lens of interpretive freedom rather than absolute ties. Analysing the lyrics of "Like Eating Glass" for a Guardian article, John Sutherland, professor of contemporary English literature at University College London, observed: "It really does resemble Sylvia Plath [another exponent of 'confessional poetry', ed.], I'm struck that whoever wrote these words must have read some of her work. It has that same kind of startling, fractured imagery. It could easily be included in a poetry anthology".

Several songs on the album have been read in political terms, and Okereke did not deny that the songs "operated within the realm of cultural politics". But he distanced himself from forced, reductive interpretations: "That 'Helicopter' is about George Bush Jr. is a common misconception, but a fairly patronising one", he told Pitchfork, adding: "In 'The Price Of Gas' [sic] I try to take a look at people's lives. There has to be more to it than just saying: 'Don't vote for Bush'. We leave room for people to draw their own conclusions".

Personality in Technicolor

Despite its many musical and literary connections — or perhaps precisely because of them! — "Silent Alarm" has a voice that is entirely its own. You hear it in all its shades especially on the tracks with the widest dynamic range. "So Here We Are", "Blue Light" and "This Modern Love" experiment with sweet, luminous atmospheres, while still exploring meaningful lyrical contrasts (the end of a relationship and the rediscovery of one's own intimacy in "Blue Light", a bold parallel between prostitution and the start of a relationship in "This Modern Love"). All three tracks build a crescendo dynamic, drawing on Mogwai's expressive vocabulary without ever falling into cliché. "This Modern Love" gives motion to its chorus by alternating four-bar sequences with sequences "interrupted" by three, while "Blue Light" pairs off a well-judged "falling phase" with an ascending climax that peaks in the bridge. The closing "Compliments", in more shadowy tones, combines electronics and post-rock to conjure an apathy close to some of the "untitled" tracks on Sigur Rós's "()", using it to brood over the bending passage of routine ("So right, so clued-up, we just get old/ And all the while, been torn asunder/ Nicotine and bacteria").

At the other end of the emotional spectrum, "Luno" and "The Pioneers" explore shades of the epic — the former with brooding synths and a blistering solo at its centre, the latter putting to good use the potential of the backing vocals and Matt Tong's inexhaustible inventiveness in dreaming up earworm beats. The band's full range of expressive possibilities unfolds in "Plans", where Okereke abandons his deliberate refusal to judge in favour of an explicit call to action, blessed by the bold choice of a finale featuring a double overlapping solo from him and Lissack. "Wake up, dreamer/ Stop being so laissez-faire/ We're all scared of the future/ It's happening without you [...] We make plans for big times/ Get bogged down, distracted [...] So kiss me before/ It all gets complicated".

Here, as pretty much everywhere on the record — as well as on the non-album singles included in the October 2005 reissue, "Little Thoughts" and "Two More Years" — producer Paul Epworth's contribution behind the mixing desk proves fundamental. Listening to the band's live shows prior to the album's release, it's immediately striking how much more forceful and breathless the same songs sounded compared to their recorded versions. Then only a decade or so into his career as a sound engineer and mix technician, and just starting out as a producer, Epworth grasped the need to build depth around the instruments and devised the most effective method to achieve it. Slowing things down, first of all. Then sonic cleanliness, but with echoes and reverb — plus a small army of microphones to widen the sound's spatiality. The utmost care went into the drums, and Matt Tong's incredibly powerful, remarkably present sound really does set a new benchmark for percussive thunder, almost an update of the Phil Collins-style gated drum sound that was everywhere some twenty years earlier. Okereke described the album's final sound as "Technicolor" — explosive yet crystalline — and acknowledged the value of the producer's choices. This despite some friction during recording, especially over the addition of the mandolin on "This Modern Love" ("Nobody in the band wanted it. [...] There was this kind of standoff where we kept insisting, 'No, we don't want it.' I don't remember how we resolved it, but in the end the mandolin went in and it actually sounded really good").

"Silent Alarm" got filed under wave revival, but in terms of production, lyrics and songcraft it belonged somewhere else entirely. Its tracks carry as much Radiohead as Television running through them, and far more math rock, post-rock and shoegaze than was recognized at the time. Then again, the band's gaze was only partly fixed on rock and its sacred monsters. Asked about a possible collaboration with Liam Gallagher, Okereke stated: "No, he's one of the last people we'd want to work with. We formed in reaction to bands like Oasis. They were an influence on us, but in making us aware of what we didn't want to do." And further: "I have a real problem with rock music [...] When you grow up, you're told that rock'n'roll is the only authentic way to express yourself. Live instruments, singer, live drums. They tell you it's the best way to communicate [...] I'd really like to put Bloc Party forward as a postmodern band. [...] There's too much rock built on fetishism and nostalgia for the old days. It's an attitude that's the enemy of music. You always have to look forward."

Many will point out, not without reason, that Bloc Party's subsequent albums — with the sole exception of the second, "A Weekend In The City", two years later — failed to live up to the expectations set by their debut. Even the remix album "Silent Alarm Remixed", certainly in keeping with the idea of "moving forward" that Okereke had prophesied, proved underwhelming despite the many solid names involved. "Silent Alarm" thus remains a one-off, and not just within the band's own discography. Released at the very peak of the nu-wave frenzy, it may well be the last great album of one species and the first of a new one. And, potentially, the best of both.

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31/12/2023