What exactly are we expecting here? Do Bloc Party owe us anything? Are they, or should they be, held responsible for whatever you think it is they are responsible? And what is that? How important are they and this album, to their own sense of being, to the more general musical landscape in 2007 and to the wider world? Does the theory match the practice? Do they matter, at all, in the end? All questions worth chewing on as you ingest the chloroform of indifference when first spending ‘A Weekend In The City’.
They’re not blameless, having done as much to set themselves up in this daunting position as anyone in the media or blogosphere, with free talk of important, innovative progress on the album, pandering to the understanding that they would return with an epitaph to all our tensions and insecurities in a continuing age of Orwellian paranoia. They inevitably fail to fulfil this unlikely prophecy even though the necessary subject matter is attempted, bluntly, repeatedly, head on. It’s an album full of contradiction and poor aim that you do gradually learn to love, but more for the impression it leaves and its willingness to succeed than anything specific it does.
The principal stumbling bloc(k) is the hook from which the whole thing (and indeed the band’s ultimate success) swings, namely Kele Okereke. Any hope that he might have flowered as a lyricist in the interim, swallowing the seed of promise and riding powerful poetic devices in pursuit of a thrashing, bi-polar zeitgeist, is sadly unfounded. While his voice has evolved into an evocative tool he’s comfortable and convincing with, its effective reach is still disappointingly stunted. “I’ve got nothing to add,” he admits glibly on ‘Waiting For The 7.18’, “or contest,” and though that refers to a contextual social situation it seems depressingly applicable to his leadership in general.
When tackling matters of prejudice, politics and uncomfortable uncertainties of this modern age, what we surely crave is either lean sloganeering, cutting the message down to its devastating core, or abstract analysis, exploration, insight, answers and understanding. We’d take any combination. What we get are short-sighted, trivial diary entries fumbling for identity or reason, checking the rear-view mirror for direction. Given the weight of the matters in hand it’s like trying to cut down an oak with one of those plastic knives you get in service stations. On the nearly great ‘Hunting For Witches’, observing Middle England’s tin-foil knee-jerk reaction to terror (“…bombs explode on the 30 bus… planes crash into towers… the Daily Mail says the enemy’s amongst us…”), the fact that he has to spell out every. last. detail. to. us. feels first patronising and then ignorant, unaware. Not nearly revolutionary.
Russell must also face up to similar charges, displaying little development in his lead, performing on cue but rarely exceeding expectation, but it is the music that urges the record back from the brink of embarrassment and for that he is saved. After spending time within its constraints, after these irksome features fade to song furniture, ‘A Weekend In the City’ allows itself to shine. On the flipside, this album is texturally incredible. Genuinely. Heart-stopping even at points, the production is heroic. Every introduced aspect pulls back another corner to let yet more stimulation flood through the cracks. The many ebbs and the flows are perceptive, and eclectic, piecing so much together into an often overwhelming art-indie wave. It’s not only jagged corners any longer, and in this respect they’ve grown massively. It’s still a little low-calorie by TV on the Radio’s intense standards, but that’s a largely superficial quibble.
If there is one thing that holds the whole charade together single-handedly (or with multi limbs at least), holding a torch aloft for the jerky precipice surfing of the debut, then it is drummer Mat Tong whose endurance, inventiveness and mechanical consistency are comparatively cataclysmic, breath-taking, evolutionary. It feels at points like he’s developing new muscle groups before your ears. When the flotsam clears and aspects align, like on constellation-gazing future-indie belter ‘On’, tense short-circuiting anti-racism holler ‘Where Is Home?’ with its message intact, and the album’s one rumbling classic ‘The Prayer’ with its unbeatable aural pincer-movement, Tong is always the pneumatic heart of those successes. He establishes himself as Reni to Bloc Party’s Stone Roses, as flawed as that overall comparison might be.
It’s a well composed record that’s beautiful to the touch, that much isn’t in doubt, and the lingering impression is bang on target; claustrophobic, dirty, nocturnal, confused, paranoid, sometimes briefly hopeful. Listen to it on headphones flying through a cityscape on a bus or train and it melds with its surroundings intuitively, exaggerating the lines and features of definition. But stand it on its own, ask questions of it, look for direction and its left floundering, pages of its manifesto scattering in the wind across the urban streets they try unsuccessfully to own. They’ll need to unite these two opposing facets of their character if they’re hoping to lodge in the ‘city’ for longer than this weekend.