by Matthew Bailey
Daily Lobo
It was hyped by the world's best music magazines, and Bloc Party's debut album Silent Alarm exceeds expectations.
If your wardrobe includes a studded belt that goes with your floppy bangs, this album is an essential purchase.
Though it's usually the domain of middle-class white boys, indie music has new champions of ethnicity and, more importantly, thoroughly enjoyable music. This East London quartet, which is not overtly fashionable in its dress or demeanor, makes real music about who the band members are and where they come from. Their music is gentle and subtle but is also focused and fulfills listeners.
The band was given its proverbial "leg up" in the music business by Franz Ferdinand who heard the band's demo and invited Bloc Party on its tour. Since then, the once shy and reclusive foursome has received much praise.
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Silent Alarm has a range of tracks and experiments with tempo - and to good effect. The brilliant post-punk opener track "Like Eating Glass" is a song as catchy as any Franz Ferdinand song and should have all the most fashionable people in England and America dancing and singing without any kind of shame.
The album deals with themes not unusual to a record of this genre. Sex, politics and frustration are woven into the tracks, yet the music and vocals sound vulnerable in a way that most of us unextraordinary or "normal" people can and will relate to.
The vocals of lead singer Kele Okereke perfectly complement the music and themes of the album. They somehow sound desperate yet confidant, frustrated yet content, distant yet close. By provoking such feelings as these, Bloc Party truly is a band that cannot be neatly slotted into one category or another.
It is a band for individual interpretations but also produces music that groups of people will share together.
Overall, the music of Bloc Party could be classified as guitar-driven, sensitive, emotive, electronic, exclusively British, wholly fashionable, modern punk-pop.
Listening to Silent Alarm made me feel claustrophobic, all the while knowing I had just heard something excellent. This band defines innovation and spits out tunes instantly recognizable.
These adverse concepts encapsulate the essence of Bloc Party - a complicated band with a relatively simple sound.
Silent Alarm
Bloc Party
Grade: A
