A Weekend in the City
The relentless shocks of jagged guitar and nosebleed drum stabs on songs like “Banquet and Helicopter” from Bloc Party’s debut, Silent Alarm, were a revelation—like they had just invented that ubiquitous disco-beat shit on the way to the club. So fresh. But little of that paranoid dance-party glory survived in the band’s transition from punchy Essex upstarts to international remix-ready punk heroes. Perhaps there are only so many stop-start staccato guitar figures in anyone’s bag of tricks; but the slowed pace and more expansive spaces created in this new batch of songs do little more than signal that dreaded second-album stretch for maturity.
Luke O'Neil
Originally published in the Weekly Dig
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