Bright lights, big city

If one band made a great leap forward in 2007, it was Bloc Party. The group followed up their superb debut album, Silent Alarm, with A Weekend In The City, a record that enjoyed excellent reviews and considerable commercial success, including a highly impressive top-twenty chart placing in the US.

The album was one of the best of the year, a collection of thumping, danceable tunes (offset by quieter, more melancholy moments) which boasted genuinely compelling and insightful lyrics that managed the very difficult trick of capturing the zeitgeist. As the title suggests, A Weekend In The City is the sound of urban life in the 21st century.
Fittingly, in such a capital year for Bloc Party, Hot Press joins the group’s singer, Kele Okereke, and drummer, Matt Tong, on the day of their biggest headlining show to date, at the Big Top in the Phoenix Park. Having finished the photo-shoot outside, the duo retire to their dressing room in the marquee behind the stage, where they seat themselves on the small couch and Kele jokingly suggests that I conduct the interview from the opposite side of the room.
Finally, I am permitted to pull up a chair and talk to the pair at somewhat closer quarters. I begin by asking about Bloc Party’s performance at Live Earth back in July, a big weekend for the band which also saw them play at Oxegen and T In The Park. Did they feel they’d furthered the cause of environmental awareness afterwards?
“We did our bit for spreading the good message,” nods Kele. “And at the end of the day, that’s all you can do.”
“I felt like a rabbit in the headlights,” admits Matt. “Drummers don’t normally feel like that at all, ’cos we don’t think about much, whereas Kele was really good actually, he got everyone to do a Mexican wave.”
“The thing is, I kind of miscalculated,” rues Kele. “Because Wembley Stadium is so large, it took about five minutes for the wave to go around, and you only have about 15 minutes to perform, so we had to start the song in the middle of it.”
I thought Spinal Tap stole the show.
“Gordon, our bass player, performed with them on ‘Big Bottoms’,” says Kele. “I didn’t actually get to meet them, but I did see Derek Smalls wandering around with a t-shirt saying, Does It Look Contagious?, which I thought was really funny.”
How do the band feel about playing bigger venues? Is it something they’d like to do more regularly?
“I know that some members of the band had concerns about the idea of doing arena shows,” replies Kele. “We’re actually doing an arena tour in December. Personally, I don’t have a problem with it. To be honest, I’d prefer to play to as many people as possible at once rather than keep touring continually. I think playing the bigger places is something that we’re becoming a lot more confident with. It doesn’t feel natural because we haven’t really done it that much, but this year we have faced those situations a fair few times, and it’s becoming a lot easier.
“It’s a very different way of performing, you’ve got to make sure there’s precision in how you play so that things translate to a bigger audience. It’s not like doing a show in a small club, where it’s a lot sweatier and messier, and it’s more about a vibe. I had a real turning point this year when I saw Prince play at the O2 Arena. It’s a 20,000 capacity venue, and I’d always been a bit sniffy about the idea of large shows, but everyone there was really willing him on and it was just a brilliant feeling.
“Stadium music gets a bad name because a lot of the bands who are that big are pretty dull, but there is something great about those shows when they work. I saw Smashing Pumpkins play at Wembley Arena years ago on their farewell tour, and it was the worst gig I’ve ever seen. It was just so impersonal. You’ve really got to make everyone feel a part of the show.”
Exactly a week before today’s gig in the Big Top, Bloc Party played a full set at London’s Roundhouse with London-based choir the Exmoor Singers, as part of the BBC’s Electric Proms festival. Whose idea was it to do a show with the choir?
“It was our idea,” explains Kele. “The ethos of the event is that bands try to work outside their normal parameters. The only thing I felt would really justify the music was if we had a choir with us, because there are lots of choral passages on the record. I didn’t want it to be some crap thing where we’d have, like, a string accompaniment when it didn’t really fit. So, playing with a choir was the only thing I thought we could do.
“It was a bit touch and go, because apparently Ray Davies was playing with a choir as well, and all week the organisers were telling us that they didn’t really want two different acts doing the same thing. So we said, ‘Well, we’re not gonna do it.’ Then they got really scared, because they realised that they had to have Bloc Party doing that show (laughs). So they acquiesced to our diva-like demand.”
Although Bloc Party eventually got the go-ahead to perform with the Exmoor Singers, they were less successful in securing the services of Johnny Borrell, who – incredibly – Ray Davies had also enlisted to perform with him.
“That was the one thing they wouldn’t give in to,” says Matt.
“It was a shame,” adds Kele.
I mention that I spoke to Borrell over the phone a few months ago.
“Was he nice?” asks Kele.
He was. And he was dating Kirsten Dunst, which I couldn’t help but admire.
“I’ve heard some pretty horrible stories about her,” laughs Kele. “But I can’t repeat it, because it might be quite libellous.”
And it might also not be true...
“Er, let’s talk about something else,” says Kele, shifting around uncomfortably on the couch.
Reluctantly agreeing to the frontman’s suggestion, I move on to the subject of Bloc Party’s recent visit to Iceland. No doubt this gave the band the chance to savour the highbrow cultural delights of this beautiful and sophisticated country.
“It was cold and wet and everyone was drunk,” says Matt. “But it was good. Aside from our festival show in a museum, we did a performance in a school, and that was organised entirely by the school council. It was really weird, ’cos there weren’t any adults there. They did it all themselves, they got all the equipment in and everything. You didn’t really notice that it wasn’t a proper gig, it felt like a typical show, just in a school hall. Very industrious schoolchildren in Iceland.”
“Iceland’s very strict about under-21s not being able to go to shows,” adds Kele. “We’ve never been there before, and all of those kids wouldn’t have got a chance to see us. We felt we had to do it for the kids, ’cos that’s what it's all about at the end of the day. The children are our future.”

In a time when most bands are locked into a rigid cycle of album/tour/album, Bloc Party are notable for a work ethic that harks backs to ’80s groups like The Smiths and The Jam. As they did in 2005, the year of Silent Alarm’s release, the group have released a brand new single, ‘Flux’, well before the promotional campaign for their current album has come to an end. Clearly, Bloc Party like to keep a constant flow of fresh material coming through.
“Songwriting has never been hard for us,” shrugs Kele. “I don’t understand these bands who take, like, seven years in between recording albums. Maybe our creativity will dry up, but right now we have lots of ideas. You have to take advantage of that, because it isn’t going to last forever. It’s not hard writing songs, and what else are you going to do when you’re on the road all year other than think about new music?”
Having earlier referred to The Smiths, I mention an article I read recently which stated that the Mancunian outfit were an influence on Kele in writing A Weekend In The City.
“I think Morrissey’s a good lyricist,” he says. “But that’s it really with them for me. And he’s certainly a real character. I think he’s the last true pop star who was an interesting kind of person, who I’d actually want to know. Whereas I think pop stars now seem very two dimensional. I have no interest in knowing any of these new bands, because they just don’t seem to have anything interesting to say. That was a very different period when truly eccentric characters were encouraged.
“Now everything seems so marketed. If you look at someone who’s supposed to be crazy, it’s usually because they’ve got a crazy haircut or wear crazy clothes, not because they’re saying anything at all interesting about life. That’s what I feel about Morrissey. I can take or leave most of the music, but I think his persona was very interesting.”
‘Flux’ is possibly the most dance-influenced song Bloc Party have released to date. Have the band been inspired by the likes of LCD Soundsystem?
“I don’t particularly like LCD Soundsystem, and I don’t think that song really has anything to do with them,” says Kele, bluntly. “Dance music is a big influence on the way that I write songs. I find it really inspirational going to clubs and listening to what’s being played and how it sounds. I think with ‘Flux’, rather than writing a song that alluded to dance music, we wanted to do something that would really work on the dancefloor. It felt important to do a track that you could really hear being played in Ibiza.”
What dance artists has Kele been listening to?
“In 2007, I’ve mainly been listening to trance records from when I was a teenager. And two-step garage records. Stuff that I really hated when I was a kid, but that’s somehow stayed with me. There aren’t many new dance acts I’m into, although I think Justice are interesting, and there’s a French guy called Sebastian that I think is fantastic. But mainly what I’ve been finding inspirational are two-step garage records and trance records from the late ’90s.
“Well, not so much trance records, as trance songs, because a trance record might be completely pummelling to listen to at home (laughs). But if you slip on Darude or Zombie Nation every now and again, they’ve just got such a huge, sinister sound. But a lot of contemporary R’n’B now is definitely stealing from that area. Look at the Justin Timberlake or Nelly Furtado records; there are so many trance-y synths in places. And that’s carried into a lot of other areas of R’n’B, that really synthetic, ugly sound.
“It’s just such a harsh sound, to the untrained ear, it might sound unnatural and weird, but the more you’ve been exposed to it, it’s a different style that has a currency. It’s not all about nice, warm guitar tones. There are other sounds that you can use to make music.”
I have to confess to being silently alarmed at Kele’s current listening, as Darude and Zombie Nation are both representative of dance music at its most boneheaded and irritating. But, to move on to happier topics, A Weekend In The City is, lyrically, one of the most interesting albums I’ve heard in a long time. In its exploration of the alternating headiness and loneliness of urban life, the record is reminiscent of Britpop classics like Blur’s Parklife and Suede’s Dog Man Star.
“It’s funny, Parklife was the first guitar record that I ever heard, and Dog Man Star was the first guitar record that I fell in love with,” says Kele. “And I’ll always really love that record, because of what it represented to me at the time. I’m proud of A Weekend In The City, but it’s the same as when Silent Alarm came out; the best and most exciting period for me is before the album is released. And once it becomes public property, it’s not really interesting anymore. I find it really hard to take compliments about it, because I’m already thinking about the new songs.”
A Weekend In The City also reminds me of Martin Amis’ book London Fields, one of the greatest novels of the past twenty years and also a huge influence on Parklife.
“I haven’t read London Fields, but I do know that it was a big influence on Damon Albarn when he was writing the words to Parklife,” says Kele. “There was no specific catalyst for the record for me personally, I just wanted to make something that really documented where my mind was at at the time, ’cos I just didn’t feel that Silent Alarm did. To me, it was just too vague. And people like that, but it was important to me that A Weekend In The City felt like it was really capturing the moment, even if nobody else got it. It’s important to have these goals, otherwise you just end up saying the same things.”

One clear literary influence on A Weekend In The City was Bret Easton Ellis, whose novel Less Than Zero inspired the lyrics of the opening track ‘Song For Clay (Disappear Here)’. Do the band know if the author has heard the song?
“He has heard it, and apparently he was a fan of ours beforehand,” says Kele. “You know how his novels have all these references to pop culture? What I’m really hoping is that we’ll be immortalised in his next book (laughs). But yeah, he had heard it, and he got in contact with us, and we were going to meet in LA. But I was too scared. I don’t get particularly fanboy about many other bands or artists, but he’s an author that I’ve respected for a long time, so I was a bit wary about meeting him.
“It’s weird, the only bands I get moved by now are the bands that I was into before we formed Bloc Party. I have no interest really in any of the new bands. I can appreciate some of their music, but I haven’t fallen in love with any of them.”
Do you think that’s because bands (and artists generally) usually feel a sense of competition with their peers?
“The music industry is a competition, really,” affirms Kele. “You’ve got the chart system and you’re constantly being rated against other people. That impulse is always going to be there, you’re always going to want to outdo your peers, and that’s what drives you sometimes to make good music.”
“It’s easy to become slightly jaded when you get overly familiar with the machinery that’s in place,” observes Matt. “But I think, simply, when you compare yourself to other bands, and a similar set of cultural circumstances formed them as well, and you just don’t think they’re up to scratch, it’s hard to really embrace them. You wonder why they couldn’t try a bit harder (laughs).”
Do the band have any ideas yet of what the third album might be like?
“I’ve written all the words,” reveals Kele. “We’re writing the music now. I think this record is going to be a much more concise process. We wrote about 30 songs for A Weekend In The City over the course of a year-and-a-half, and we edited things and changed things. By the end of it, everything was so mapped out that it just didn’t feel very spontaneous. I think with this third record, we’re gonna leave a lot to happen in the studio, in terms of the musical arrangements. And I want it to feel a lot more like a studio record.
“One of the albums that I’ve liked the most this year has been that Battles record. I’m not the biggest fan of that sort of music – I used to like it more when I was younger – but I like the way they use technology. You listen to that record and it doesn’t sound like anything else in the world, it’s got its own set of rules. It’s like looking at an Escher painting or something, where nothing seems to make any sense. It’s really great for a current album to have that, ’cos so many records now are completely in thrall to something else. Everything is a pastiche of something else, so it’s nice to hear a really modern-sounding, experimental rock record.”
Lyrically, what sort of terrain will Kele be exploring on the next album?
“I guess if A Weekend In The City was a record about complaining about going out, then this record will be about human relationships, and interior spaces and desires. It’s going to be very much an internal record. Not personal in the sense of being autobiographical, but personal in the sense of asking ‘what is desire’, and trying to explain how the mind justifies itself. It sounds really wet, doesn’t it? It’s hard to explain, you have to hear it.”
“You’ve talked it up, we’ve gotta make it now,” laughs Matt.
Kele is noted as a big Radiohead fan. Did he like In Rainbows?
“My problem with it isn’t really with the record. A lot of those songs have been on the internet for a year-and-half, so there wasn’t really that wow factor, ’cos I knew pretty much what it sounded like. I’m a Radiohead fan, but of all of their records, this is by far the one that I’m least excited about listening to. It’s a good record, but I just think that the space they occupy now is very kind of middle-aged and very music teacher or something. There’s no violence about the way they sound or the way they sing.
“That’s not because there are less guitars on there, but to me it just sounds like another Radiohead record, whereas Kid A, OK Computer and to some extent Hail To The Thief all sounded like they were moving into somewhere new. I still listen to it more than any other record I bought this year, but as a fan, I think they’ve moved into a place that’s kind of calm. But I’m sure it’ll sound great live. And I wanna hear the other ten songs that they’ve recorded as well.”
Could Kele envisage Bloc Party releasing an album online?
“Well, we have one more album on our deal, and then that’s it, you know? The industry is changing. I remember when I heard that Radiohead were releasing their album online in ten days, I thought that was the best thing they’ve ever done. I felt really excited about being a Radiohead fan again, ’cos that was a band finally taking the initiative and doing it. But they are in a very different position. They are a stadium rock band and people will always buy their records and go see them play live.
“It wouldn’t work for a band starting out ’cos they need to establish themselves, but I certainly do think the classic major label model is completely outdated. The sooner it goes, the better.”
Finally, when Kele looks back on 2007, he must be pleased with what A Weekend In The City has accomplished.
“Yeah, I’m happy that it’s out there and doing well. We had to sit on the album for a long time after it was recorded – we finished it six months before it was released – so I’m just glad that it’s out and people have had a chance to live with it. Now we’re starting to see people really react to it, which is fantastic. Also, with the success of the album, it’s nice to know that we can go to nearly any city in the world and play to 5,000 people or something.
“Ultimately, though, you just want it to touch people. I was in a bar a few days ago, and it was Halloween. I was with some friends and a girl came up to me and told me that she’d really responded to one of the songs on the record. It was ‘Where Is Home?’ That song really touched her, and that was the first time I’d heard that from someone. It’s great when you see that the album does mean something to people. Here’s to the next one.”