The 3 features in this week's NME are on 3 of my favourite bands, Klaxons, CSS and Bloc Party. Needless to say I went straight into the Bloc Party interview with relish, but I wasn't quite expecting to see one of the subjects that came up. I know BP are the most intelligent, vital and downright best looking band in the world (only rivals being the aforementioned Klaxons and CSS) but when I thought of the issues to be addressed in their new album I thought of drug abuse, racism, cultural fear and the misused power of the media.
Never in my knowledge of their existance had I ever entertained the thought that Kele Okereke might be gay. Never.
Russell wouldn't have been surprising (hello bloc head), Gordon maybe a bit of a shock, Matt would've been a downright no brainer, but Kele? There's just nothing there that even hints at it, he dodged the question in the transcribed interview and that just makes me wonder more. I seriously doubt we'll know the truth in public this side of a 3rd album though. If he is though, it could change the UK indie landscape forever. Existing BP fans would be unlikely to care, they have the intelligence to accept that it doesn't really affect them. It will drag a sensitive issue out into the open though, potentially there's a massive debate waiting to happen and I for one will watch it intently if it happens.
Bloc Party show a disillusionment with modern life and British society that the other 'voice of Britain' bands like The View and Arctic Monkeys just can't get. For the mainstream fan those 2 do embody modern life, go out, get pissed, get laid, come home and do it all again the next weekend. That's not real for a lot of people, think of those at a younger age, 16-17 or maybe older. From experience I know this a lot better than probably a lot of people, that's not modern life. Modern life is a struggle against established ideas, ideas that A Weekend In The City challenges from what I've heard of it. For anyone who doesn't subscribe to the ideals of getting wasted, forgetting the whole night and sleeping with whoever was at the bar at the right time modern life is a lot different from the picture painted by the Arctics on that first album, I said it at the time and I say it now. That is Britain, but not for everyone. I only hope that the mainstream fans buying AWITC listen to it properly and realise the message its trying to send, so many concept albums like this fall on deaf ears to people who only use music as background noise.
Damn, the albums of 2007 lists are going to be tough to do this year. How do you choose a #1 from what's out and what's set to come?
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