Blogarhythms

Late last week British Post-Punk revivalists Bloc Party pulled a Gnarls Barkley-meets-Radiohead, releasing their latest LP ahead of any sort of industry-approved schedule and with little fanfare via their website. You could pre-order a physical copy, which will ship at the end of October, plus a digital download that would be available immediately, for a double sawbuck. Or cut the asking price in half if you just want quick access to the digi-download. Pretty sweet, right?

I’d been anticipating a new full-length from the band since they dropped the one-off single “Flux”–a mostly electronic, auto-tune-adorned, Techno-Pop thumper with a heartwarmingly geektacular Kaiju Big Battel-featuring video clip–last year. I don’t know if it was the name “Bloc Party” itself, the shadow of that ridiculously dope remix of “Helicopter” by Diplo, or what, but I’d always wanted more programmed beats and synthesizers from the band, two things “Flux” ecstatically delivered, much to my delight. With “Flux” my desires had been fulfilled, so I hoped that they’d keep up the knob tweaking if and when they released another album.

Despite my anticipation, I was still caught off guard by just how swift the band was to deliver. First a new video and single titled “Mercury” that not only continued in the digitally ornamented direction I wished it would, but whose title and chorus were a reference to an astrological phenomenon that’s always a major happening around my house, the release of which immediately followed an actual Mercury retrograde. And now, as if from out of nowhere, here’s their third full-length album Intimacy!

Bloc Party “Mercury”

A week before Intimacy’s release I’d a conversation with a MySpace buddy worried some fans might be bummed about the less-than-organic tone of “Flux” (which isn’t on the album) and “Mercury.” So the first thing I noted when I put Intimacy on last Friday was that it exhibits a band that unequivocally rocks. Opener “Ares” quite literally screams out the gate with buzz-saw guitars and manic drumming buoying Kele Okereke’s Punk/Rap hybrid call-n-response before the chorus cranks the decibels even higher with Kele screeching along to a monstrous guttural growl. While songs like “Trojan Horse,” “Halo” and “One Month Off” stick close to the band’s longtime blueprint of speedy, emotive Post-Punk raveups with razor-edged guitars riding thundering backbeats with only the slightest electronic embellishment.

Guitarless or not, first single “Mercury,” an energetic Grime-influenced jam with a shuddering drum beat, spy movie soundtrack horns and an evil synth buzz, is an ass-kicker as well. But the instances when the band leans most heavily on the sound of synthesizers, drum machines and keyboards tend to occur on the album’s more delicate compositions, coating Okereke’s songs of pain, anger, heartbreak, alienation and rebellion with a suitably chilly crust of digital frost. So selections like “Ion Square,” “Better Than Heaven,” “Zephyrus,” “Signs” and “Biko” end up splitting the difference between the melancholy Synth-Rock of Violator-period Depeche Mode, Joy Division at their most intense & spacious, and Postal Service’s nervous anthems of computer-age sentimentality, disaffection and loneliness.

In all my wishing and hoping I never expected anything quite like that. But I love it! The electro-claps that lend urgency to the muted guitar plucks on “Biko.” The resonant bass hum and sizzling synth that drive the twangy “Better Than Heaven” to its cacophonous guitar and drum-jam conclusion. And especially “Ion Square,” which retrofits ’50s piano balladry with layers of Shoegaze-y reverb, a propulsive mechanical drum-beat, layers of percolating synths, siren-like guitar drones, effects, effects and more effects until it blissfully explodes into a blippy arc of sparking keyboard short-circuitry!

Bloc Party “Ion Square”

Reportedly Kele set out to make songs that would inspire rhythmic movement more than insular introspection. To that end Okereke may have failed to meet his goal, because the songs on Intimacy actually do both equally well.