When I was five, I found a gigantic empty cardboard box in my garage. Immediately upon discovering it, I almost pissed my shorts with uncontrollable excitement. It looked just like an airplane! My mind began to sculpt a joyous ride through the clouds as I waved to the ones I loved below. So, I got out some scissors and tape.
All afternoon, I went to work, cutting a hole in it so I could fit my Hostess-Twinkie saturated body out the top. I taped fake wings to the side. I wrote Eric Airlines on the side. Pure poetry indeed. When I was done, I looked at my plane. It was beautiful. Placing it on the sidewalk, I made airplane noises and got lost in the high altitudes of my young mind, intoxicated with imagination. "Come look at my plane!" I yelled. My dad continued to caulk the cracks in our front steps, periodically looking up with a forced smile. My mom peeked out the window, waved, then disappeared back into her chores. My best friend, and neighbor at the time, came over and told me the plane was stupid. It was at that point, I reexamined my construction of fantastic aviation and thought, "Darn. All that work and this is what I get?" Point being, I invested a whole afternoon just to fuck up a perfectly good box. And in the end, no one remembers this pointless shit but me.
This was one of the first things I thought about when listening to Bloc Party's newest album A Weekend in the City. The lame title alone is enough to send up a red flag. However, after enjoying their full-length Silent Alarm, this hunk of far-reaching aural boredom falls hard on it's face, like me, the fat kid trying to get his foot out of that damn box airplane.
Bloc Party used to a far above average post-punk influenced group of young punks, displaying a impeccable balance of sincerity for both lyrics and music with a desire to get themselves and the listeners moving. Throughout the duration of A Weekend in the City, I wasn't moved in anyway possible, with the exception of my bowels.
Instead of pressing on with the formula that worked so damn great in the past, Bloc Party have taken the path every "serious" group of musicians seem to in their career. And that is reach beyond the capacity of their capable songwriting. There's this inexplicable desire that often plagues some of the most promising bands. I've seen it happen with The Mars Volta and The Flaming Lips' last album. Frankly, I'm sick of it. It's like watching your favorite extended family members die off in unnecessary kitchen remodeling accidents. The oak cabinets were fine Aunt Stella! WHY? These bands feel some need to flash moments of brilliance and show musical maturity. Still, the brilliance on these albums generally come off as purely forced and pompously grandiose. Bloc Party is no exception. It's as if they sold their early Gang of Four albums to Coconuts for store credit and bought Coldplay CDs full of yawn rock.
Towards the end of this album, it hit me. Almost every song starts off relatively the same. Sensitive ballads, full of layering synths, and useless beeps. Bloc Party, again, seem to be following the ever growing trend of the digital advantages of the studio. Leave your guitars at home fellas. There's a perfectly good laptop and piano in the studio. Give me a break!
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of guitar outbursts on this album, but by the time they generally show up, I'm already sleeping behind the wheel. Other times, I'm trying to get over the fact that singer, Kele Okereke's voice doesn't match this type of music. His desperate melodic chants on past tracks like Banquet and She's Hearing Voices sound downright out of place in this space-dance context. Even the studio compression and voice alternators don't help. But even that is like trying to get off methadone by undertaking a heroin addiction. It just adds to the mounting problems.
The album isn't all cracked foundation and chipped stucco though. I found myself turning my ear to I Still Remember, wondering if it was lifted from The Wedding Singer soundtrack, smiling, remembering the early part of a decade I didn't live through. Waiting For the 7.18 also works for the most part, utilizing well placed guitar swelling mixed with danceable drumming of the Bloc Party I used to appreciate. But on songs like Sunday, where Okereke swoons and croons over a perfectly good waste of syncopated toms, I find myself asking "what's the point?" And how long must we wait until Bloc Party gets back to it.
Like my box plane that I invested so much time into, this album is similarly made little impression in the scheme of things. It may have been the ultimate goal for Bloc Party to conquer the world, expand on their sound by adding ambient noises. But they ran before they could walk, breaking their legs and falling into territory they weren't ready for yet. Stick with what works. Leave the box intact. Don't mangle what you've got. I don't understand why band's are so concerned with keeping a workable sound these days. They're like major networks axing off sitcoms after four episodes. So what if they'd make a Silent Alarm part II and don't end up jerking off the critics?Make what you can, while you can, and then over time, you might evolve into the band you where meant to be. At least, eventually, we'd have something to move us in anyway possible. Until then, I'm not attending this party again anytime soon. Let the cops shut it down.
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