It’s hard to write about a band that I’ve loved so much for so long. Bloc Party have been my favourite band since I unwrapped 2005’s Silent Alarm on my 11th birthday and the impact of that album, 2007’s A Weekend In The City, and 2008’s Intimacy have been huge. To me, Bloc Party are the Beatles of Indie, the Stones of 21st century alternative rock. The impact of their music can be seen in the likes of Foals, Klaxons and The Cribs. They embark on yet another huge U.K tour this October, starting on the 2nd and playing a different town every night until the 31st. In recent interviews, lead singer Kele Okereke has said that this may be the last we see of Bloc Party for a couple of years, however if they play anything like they played last night at the Ironworks, their fans will want them back immediately.
Surprisingly they open with Trojan Horse, an electric song with huge guitars that just seems to get more intense and as it builds into a crescendo, the crowd really got moving and by the end of even the first song they’re already a sweaty mess.
The similarly massive Like Eating Glass makes for a huge sing along of “It’s so cold in this house!” They mix old with less old by merging Song For Clay: Disappear Here with arguably the best guitar fuelled indie song ever written, Banquet. A slightly faster paced version of the glockenspiel lead Signs goes down well, with a cool drum beat added by one of the most technical drummers of this decade. Talons is as powerful as it is recorded, Mercury is fantastic live, even if I did hate it when they released it. Hunting For Witches goes off like a bomb, however Bloc Party are not the sort of band who only play crowd pleasers, for example they play Compliments, an eerie art rock masterpiece which was a hidden classic on Silent Alarm and a treat, which was, as Kele put it, “For anyone who wanted to see us back in 2005.”
Talk about a powerful encore. The quartet come back on stage to play Flux, one of the biggest dance songs of last year and Ares, the hugely violent opener of Intimacy. Kele states “This is a song for fighting to… We hear you Highlanders love a fight, have you got any fight left in you!?” As a bottle is hurled past his head he dives into the crowd as Ares bursts into life and Kele shows off his excellent singing whilst crowdsurfing skills. As Ares sputters out of life he takes a breath and says “wow… if that last song was for fighting then this song is definitely for dancing to.” And after a blast of feedback from languid guitarist Russell Lissack he grins at Kele from behind his triangular block of fringe and blasts into the anthem of 2005, Helicopter, which is up there with Banquet for best indie guitar song of the decade. The drummer, Matt Tong plays an extended solo at the end and the sweaty band take their bows and leave the stage to huge cheers from the crowd, by this point a drenched mess of sticky t-shirts and shower hair.
Hopefully Kele will go against his word about taking a year or two out from Bloc Party and they’ll get straight back into the studio again, I’m looking forward to seeing them live again already.
