— by Carolyn E. Davis, with reporting by Conor Bezane
Don't you dare start rolling your eyes at the mere suggestion of adding another British arty-post-punk-rock-band-you-can-dance-to on your iPod. Bloc Party may very well make you toss any preconceptions out the window, with a sound that made them worthy of a friendly jump-start from Franz Ferdinand and an album that has already proven itself in the U.K.
Bloc Party might half-correctly be compared to the Cure and Joy Division as well as contemporaries like the Rapture and Franz. Such points of reference are accepted as inevitable by the band — frontman Kele Okereke, guitarist Russell Lissack, bassist Gordon Moakes and drummer Matt Tong — but the group doesn't see itself as carrying on any particular rock tradition.
"There wasn't a conscious decision for us to sound zany or crazy," Okereke said. "There were bands that were popular when I was younger that I quite liked. There was music that I was hearing in clubs and stuff that I really really liked. I was just trying to make a place where [these sounds] could all meet."
If the sound of the group is based on such disparate elements meeting, it is no wonder that it took from the time Okereke and Lissack met at the Reading Festival in 1998 until 2003 to reach its current lineup. Moakes was the first bass player the pair had tried in 2000, but it wasn't until Tong came to join the band three years and nine drummers later that the group was complete. While being the newbie might have been a hard adjustment for someone else, Tong saw it as an advantage. "I'm the only person in the band who's had the benefit of seeing the band perform before joining," he said.
It was Franz Ferdinand that initially gave the foursome a leg up. After Bloc Party sent a demo to a bunch of bands two years ago, Franz had them open at a London gig, which helped them build significant buzz and eventually led to a record deal. "We are quite grateful they said, 'Put your money where your mouth is and play a show with us,' " Moakes said. "We didn't know if it would lead to anything but it was certainly something that we enjoyed doing."
Bloc Party's debut album, Silent Alarm, recorded in a month in Copenhagen, Denmark, is crammed full of well-crafted hooks and carefully honed rock tracks that vary in mood and tempo. With its peppy drum pattern one could conceivably dance to, their first single, "Banquet," does recall Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out." "It's quite racy," Okereke said. "It is just a song about being into someone, an obsession, and the dark side of that emotion. We wanted a video that would explore that as well. Perfecting it in a very cheesy way."
"We're being manipulated by a giant female hand. It's not quite as rude as it sounds," Tong added.
It remains to be seen if the album's U.S. release (on March 22) will make Bloc Party's star start to rise on this side of the pond. They will just be coming off a bunch of U.K. dates with Kaiser Chiefs, and are looking forward to getting even more exposure after they play at South by Southwest and the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
Bloc Party have no intention of getting nervous about things now. "There isn't really pressure at all, to be honest," Okereke said. "We've made the best album that we could have possibly made. It's for people to find it for themselves. I'm very proud of what we managed to do. The only pressure I feel is the order of trying to keep writing."
The group's only real reservations at this point, Moakes revealed, revolve around meteorological issues at Coachella. "Some of us are pasty — we're kind of used to British cold, so we're not sure how we'll perform under desert conditions!"
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