Bloc Party- Intimacy (****)

With the onset of iPods and iTunes accounts becoming common place in the 2000s, it feels like there’s a disturbing trend of fewer and fewer bands pushing the sonic envelop. You know the bands I’m talking about, the ones that make you rethink how you look at an album rather than a single, the bands that took radical risks to explore soundscapes and musical tension rather than the next Top 40 hit.

It seems like they’ve gone the way of the dinosaurs, unable to coexist or compete in this musical landscape of Soulja Boys and Panic(!) At The Discos. And so far, the 2000s have yet to yield an album that’s as revolutionary as an Adore or a Kid A.

Yet at a time where most bands make music that’s an easily digestible pile of hooks and slick synthesizers, Bloc Party has decided to remind everyone that there are still artists out there trying to make substantive and sonically dense albums.

Taking a page out of Radiohead’s playbook, the British four piece digitally released their third album, Intimacy, on Aug. 21., a mere few days after the final mixing and mastering was completed. While the physical release slated for Oct. 27. promises fans additional tracks, the 10 songs on Intimacy’s digital release represent a band fascinated with combining abrasive white noise clattering alongside dense dance beats and majestic atmospherics.

The album’s opening track, “Ares,” successfully illustrates how baroque and meticulously crafted Bloc Party has made Intimacy. Making liberal use of Russel Lissack’s guitar turned air-raid siren, the band launches into a chunky and stuttering number that marries everything from messy static splatterings, to thick and powerful drums. The track climbs and falls with grace and ferocity, as front man Kele Okereke’s full voice barely holds the chaos together.

As a whole, Intimacy reveals a vastly different Bloc Party than the public might be ready for, a band that focuses on tension and competing sounds rather than attempting to rehash the spikey post-punk of 2005’s Silent Alarm or the expansive ambiance of 2007’s A Weekend In The City.

But for as abrasive as some of these songs are, there is a sensual and sexual tension to much of this album.

The grimy break beats, buzzing keyboards, and sliding horns found on “Mercury” bring that tension into a downright danceable, din. And while Okereke has stated that much of Intimacy’s lyrics deal with a painful break up he endured at the end of 2007, songs like “Mercury” might actually push listeners into clubs and discos rather than onto a bottle of their favorite bourbon.

Elsewhere, “Zephyrus” begins with Okereke’s voice copiously layered against bleak thumping beats and velvet strings, all before erupting in gothic tinged backing vocals. Part Danny Elfman score, part dancehall anthem, the track soars with a cinematic quality while Okereke laments, “Backwards, forwards but making no ground at all/Standing in the city with the clocks counting words/And your face is still wet from the night before/As your tears hit the ground blue flowers spring from them.”

But make no mistake, Bloc Party have not crafted a straight dance album. In fact, Intimacy’s strength relies on how seamless the band is able to mesh their electronic leanings with their off-kilter riffs and relentless rhythms. “Trojan Horse’s” fuzzy and digitally laced overdrive plugs away relentlessly, with drummer Matt Tong’s avalanche of rolls and fills providing busy back beats.

“Biko” begins with sparse open notes as it slowly builds alongside syrupy guitar tones and skittering break beats while Okereke morosely sings, “Was my love not strong enough?/To bring you back from the dead/If I could I would eat your cancer/But I can’t.” The whole song concludes with choppy digital trickery as Okereke’s wail fades wistfully into the distance.

Producers Jacknife Lee and Paul Epworth seem to have really focused and pushed Bloc Party to a point where they feel they can truly tackle any arrangement.

The album’s opus is the ethereal “Signs,” a sparse number merely held together by a plethora of chimes and sweeping strings. There’s a soaring quality to it, with Okereke channeling his smoothest register for largest effect as he sings, “I see signs now all the time/That you’re not dead, you’re sleeping…” Nimble keyboards crop here and there, but the sparkling quality of “Signs” illustrates how Bloc Party has managed to experiment in a sonically courageous way while still retaining their signature song craft.

In the end, this is probably why Intimacy succeeds; Bloc Party didn’t need to write this record.

Fans would have been fine if they made another Silent Alarm because of it’s accessibility and it’s deft hooks, but instead they opted to create a sonically diverse record in the name of growth.

They’ve channeled bands like Radiohead, The Smashing Pumpkins, and U2, choosing to create an album of songs that would mean more to them and their craft rather than trying to top themselves with something that would yield huge sales.

And that brings us intimately closer to a set of serious musicians.

Sounds Like: A Weekend In The City (Bloc Party), Adore (The Smashing Pumpkins), Achtung Baby (U2)

Key Cuts: Biko, Signs, Zephyrus

Click the artwork to sample some of Intimacy for yourself!

Author's Note: This review appears in a recent issue of the Sonoma State Star. As this is the author's own writing and this is his own blog, in addition to holding the position of A&E Editor for the Sonoma State Star, he posts it here with express consent of himself. Duh.