A turn towards heavy guitar and vocals makes Four an anomaly
The problem with being a great band is that you set the standard to always be great. Unfortunately for Bloc Party, their latest album Four just doesn’t quite measure up in comparison to its predecessors. Guitar heavy in a way that is oddly similar to Three Days Grace, the album is too loud and too rock for a band that made their mark with upbeat synthpop and vocals you could identify anywhere.
With reports that Four was influenced more by Radiohead than earlier records, it makes sense that its opening track “So He Begins To Lie” plays like the formula for a typical head-banger metal song; repetitive guitar chords that lead up to a harsh, booming chorus that does its best to drown out lead singer Kele Okereke’s voice. Even “Coliseum”, which begins promisingly with a beat that sounds straight out of a western film, abruptly slips back to the rock-anthem vibe with Okereke screaming most of the lyrics. These tracks might as well have been recorded by a different band entirely.
The thing about Four, though, is that what it does well, it does great. When “3×3” starts playing, with the eerie, whisper-angry tone of Okereke’s vocals haunting quality of the melody, and the way he sings “now you’re one of / you’re one of us” in a voice that screams cult and horror, there are chills. Then there’s “V.A.L.I.S.”, a track so catchy and upbeat and full of clapping that your head is bound to bop along with it. In this, there are echoes of the old Bloc Party’s “Positive Tension”: the track has a bass line to die for, a rush in the background that sounds like wind, and a chorus that focuses more on Okereke’s vocals than the instrumental. It’s in these tracks that Bloc Party manages to recapture some of their old magic and remind us all of why we got excited over Four to begin with.
If you don’t know what Bloc Party is truly capable of, Four is perfectly enjoyable. But if you’ve followed this band from the beginning, sat and praised the beauty of Silent Alarm, and wondered at the distinctiveness of Kele Okereke’s voice, Four feels more like a first album than a fourth.
