Rachael Wright
Bloc Party have never been average, or comfortable becoming so. Kele Okereke has pushed this to breaking point at every stage over the years.
With each album, their musical spectrum has grown ferociously – as has their live performance. So, tonight at the Leeds Academy holds high hopes for every one gathered.
It’s something Bloc Party themselves seem to understand; from the moment they take to stage it’s an assault. That doesn’t mean hammering everything hard, as there are moments of beauty and contemplation, but it does mean everything is infused with intensity. By the time the first loops and wails of ‘Mercury’ kick in, all thought of tomorrow is gone – the intensity of the moment is all there will be this evening.
But this isn’t some singular special moment, this is just the gear shift.
Now with five studio albums to draw from, they just leap from one thing to the next. Each album has an individualistic tone, and that plays extremely well live. From the Gang Of Four inflections on ‘Silent Alarm’ to the breaks and beats insanity of ‘Intimacy’, there is a lot for them to go at, and go at it they do.
Latest album ‘Hymns’ just slots into place without ever sounding unfamiliar; tracks like tonight’s opener ‘Only He Can Heal Me’ and the exciting ‘The Love Within’ already live gems, while ‘Ratchet’ is as peculiar live as it is on the record, ‘Fortress’ as beautiful as anything as they’ve ever done since ‘So Here We Are’.
But, the real showstoppers are ‘Silent Alarm’s powerhouses. ‘This Modern Love’ is not an obvious choice, but like an old friend you’ve not seen in a long time, everything settles back into place and you leave wondering why you’d left it so long to catch up. And there’s ‘Helicopter’, which even after all these years is completely unstoppable. This is why people watch Bloc Party, for their ability to marry absolute ferocity with real moments of beauty.
Which brings us to ‘Banquet’ – the same as ‘Helicopter’, but in reverse. The rhythm’s dialled down, but the beauty’s dialled up. ‘Banquet’ stands strong against time, against competition from subsequent albums, against overplaying, against repeated discussion or anything else levelled against it.
And live it’s an extreme pleasure, as is everything else, as Bloc Party are a band prone to elongated gaps between tours. But tonight they are here, they are live and they are pushing everyone’s buttons. If only every band could do this live, had these tracks to draw from.
The only hope is that this tour lasts forever.