Intimacy – Bloc Party

Year Released: 2008

Label: Wichita

Year Bought: 2008

Bloc Party's first two albums were absolute mainstays of my uni years, but their third, 2008's 'Intimacy', didn't touch the sides.

All I remember of this album is that they were trying to be nu-rave and the beginning bit of 'Mercury'.

Listening to this album for the first time in 16 years, I can see why I didn't get on with it at the time. It's a dense, loud album, with hardly any room in the songs for air. The drums – and drum machines – are all very in-your-face so it is a struggle to really sit and actually listen to.

The use of electronic drums is one of the main departures from Bloc Party's previous efforts, which for me is a real shame. One of the strengths of the group was that Matt Tong was a one-man drum machine, and using actual drum machines just feels like a step backwards.

Opening song 'Ares' kicks things off with a searing guitar and huge drums that sound like something from Basement Jaxx. Then in comes Kele Okereke's voice and it just doesn't work. His tone and timbre are all wrong for this sort of speak-singing delivery. It just sounds too thin and the track is all over the place.

'Mercury' is more of the same, but by the third track, 'Halo', you feel like you're listening to Bloc Party, not Bloc Party trying to be another band.

There's not really any classic songs on the album. The best are 'One Month Off' - until a god awful key change that even Westlife would be embarrassed about; 'Ion Square'- which has a bit of the 'This Modern Love' swing and a nice build up; and 'Biko', which sounds like old school Bloc Party thanks to its arpeggiated guitars.

The theme of the album is about a relationship coming to an end, and there's some painfully honest lyrics from Okereke which are genuinely powerful. "Cause I love my mind when I'm fucking you, slowed down to a crawl," he sings on 'Ion Square', and "I left you blueberries in the fridge, the little things that I can do," on Biko.

'Zephyrus' is an interesting track worth checking out. It mixes a choir with electronic drums, using the voices as a string section. It almost works.

Within a couple of years, Everything, Everything would come along and do this sort of thing much better.

4/10

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