new bloc party album - a weekend in the city

A Weekend in The City is inspired by lead singer Kele Okereke's interest in what he calls "the living noise of a metropolis." On Weekend, the band captures every detail from ebullient to the mundane – of daily life in a modern city, and the quiet desolation that suffuses everything from commuting to casual sex, from going out on a Friday night to the long ride home in the early hours of the morning. These are songs desperate to understand the meaning that pulses under the moments of our everyday: there are bursting with tension, paranoia, sadness, love and an intense need for reason as to how city life has become so displacing.

The track listing for A Weekend in the City is...

01. Song For Clay (Disappear Here)
02. Hunting For Witches
03. Waiting For the 7.18
04. The Prayer
05. Uniform
06. On
07. Where Is Home?
08. Kreuzberg
09. I Still Remember
10. Sunday
11. SRXT

not enjoying yourselves in london then boys?

Not everybody gets casual sex!

nice.

(NB: i loved Silent Alarm so I am actually looking forward to this album even if that concept description leaves me cold.)

;_;

There are occasions when the guitars sound great though.

Normally this would be a good thing, but in Bloc Party's case it would be catastrophic. Like ditching Hooky's bass or Marr's guitar, integral to the sound and emotion of their records. Was really psyched about this but am now a bit trepidatious.

For me this album seems like the last album too. Apart from Little Thoughts and Banquet, they haven't got any really, really big pop songs anyway, but as an album, it's not too bad. Though I'd like to hear the properly mixed version when it comes out, to see if it's any better.

nice, but less nice than the previous one :-(

Looks like the earlier one was either complete speculation or one of the selection they had to choose from.

Is that leak by BLOC PARTY or by BLOC PARTY. ?

Anyone else find the track order on this odd? Switch "On" and "Where Is Home" and the two halves almost seem like different bands. Different moods for sure.

I found this article a little disturbing and a little irritating. The former because of McLean's seeming desperation for Kele to say "I fuck boys, don't you fuck boys?", and the second because it makes no mention whatsoever of Luke Sutherland, singer from Long Fin Killie and Bows, who did the intelligent, dreadlocked, black, gay indie singer "schtick" (if there is such a thing) a decade before Kele (not that it makes it any easier for Kele to be who he is), and also did it in Scotland, which I would imagine is a damn site more difficult than doing it in the South East / London. It's such an obvious comparison to make, and I think asking Okereke if he knows of Sutherland and if so how he feels about him would have been a damn site more interesting than the goading that some of the piece borders on.

Also, Jacknife Lee is an awful, awful record producer.

OTM re: the production, though, I'm not really a fan of this band anyway to be honest but it has this bloodless nu-emoish sheen that's just killed any interest for me.

Actually I disagree, shoehorning other artists in there purely on that basis is condescending as fuck.

"Yes, Kele might be...BLACK and GAY!!!1!!"

This means you'd succumb to his insideous Somerset homosexual advances?

24 carat gold

yeah he is a shit singer.

the album is growing on me, though - and I saw them live last night and they were *fantastic*, new songs and all.

OTM - I am currently trying to Google the lyrics to the b-side (cheap shot, maybe) of the 'Prayer' single. They are mind-blowing, seriously.

Bury the thoughts that resurface
Those hands were mine

And now our love has been forgotten
Like it was never there
We're just sitting here like strangers
You gave me yourself for just a little while
But it was you, it was really you

Staring into my coffee
It is not black just a shade of brown
Too scared to let our eyes meet
What will we see?

And now our love has been forgotten...

And now our love has been forgotten...

The space between us
Will not be beat
Oceans and past lives
We were lovers

I haven't really got much time for girls
Don't get me wrong now
Don't get me wrong now
It's just my nights are occupied with lighting
These damn lamps
???
Oh, and night's a time for courting for girls
Night's a time for courting for girls
Isn't it?

I've been propositioned by girls before
On me lamp rounds
Oh yes, I have
But I'm at pains to explain it's not my line of trade
Buying flowers and chocolate mice
It's just the thought of commitment's totally wild
Any sort of commitment's out of order
Isn't it?

I've had some girls come up to me
Who said it won't take that long
Just a quick one up the back
One for the road
And I'm at pains to explain I'm not that type of guy
Send the sulking (?) bitches on their way

I seem to have a lot more time for guys
Don't get me wrong now
Don't get me wrong now
It's just their wit and charm and conversation
Captures youth and that's the truth
Oh and youth's the time when cares traipse free...

I've had some girls come up to me
Who said it won't take that long
Just a quick one up the back
One for the road
And I'm at pains to explain I'm not that type of guy
Send the sulking (?) bitches on their way

not a good review, but the berlin wall reference is kind of alarming!

At Les Trois Garcons
we meet at precisely 9 o'clock.
I order the foie gras
and I eat it with complete disdain.

Don't order the fucking foie gras then, you tit.

I'd have bitched about (and paid more attention to) the lyrics so much more if the production wasn't so hideous.

i always thought it was 'slack-jawed bitches'.

he's paraphrased an old un-used richey edwards lyric on one track too.

manics fans will know it when they hear it.

00Trent (2 weeks ago)
Like all their song's there is a great message. fantastic band.
(Reply) (Spam)

we've talked about about sutherland here for me to feel justified in asking if anyone knows what he is up to. cassidy came out in.. 2001?

In many ways this is exactly what I want modern slightly arty rock music to sound like but Kele drags it down with his bad singing and atrocious lyrics - This Is Not Home epitomises the whole problem really. Vocally at least, most of the songs use exactly the same melodic melodic tics, like Kele's sort of fumbling around in search of a tune.

i finally got a chance to listen to this loud in my car/hear the songs live and s0uthall is otm about how terribly produced this is. the guitars on the bottoms of the non-ballads are just hideous noise.

still one of the 4-5 best rock records released this year i think, but christ jacknife lee.

bottom*

man these guys fell off the planet pretty fast. being as dull as your music in interviews does not seem to be a winning strategy.

prob the only album i insist on playing god with but the b-sides are so much better than at least half of what made the album, particularly "cain said to abel" and "rhododendrons," the latter of which is prob kele's least embarrassing attempt to assess the themes of weekend

"kreuzberg" is prob my favorite bloc party song though

what's the brad version tracklist

1. song for clay
2. cain said to abel
3. waiting for the 7.18
4. we were lovers
5. rhododendrons
6. on
7. uniform
8. kreuzberg
9. i still remember
10. sunday
11. england
12. sxrt

recently revised (i had "selfish son" in there but felt it brought down the pacing, and decided I actually really like "uniform") and not thoroughly road-tested but i'm pretty confident this is 1000000x better than the released version

that tracklist looks great, really no idea how they managed to leave off Rhondodendrons and England especially, Rhondodendrons has to be one of my absolute favourites by them. I'm not huge on We Were Lovers and might take Selfish Son or Hunting for Witches over it but I understand how there's enough of those slow burn tracks like Selfish Son on it already

it's such a weird album, a lot of little awkward bits bring it down more than anything else, especially Kele's inability to write lyrics to fit his melodies

The Prayer has to be one of the worst attempts at 'incorporating an R&B influence' by an indie band ever lol - the beat is so awkward and impossible to move in any way to, but even then the chorus is still good

thx brad, I'll give er a shot. always found this album baffling

Now, y'see, the only change that I would make to the original album would be to remove 'Sunday' ...

... I know this album has some - to put it mildly - awkward lyrics, but I like this album and I've always liked this album, and even find parts of it ('Kreuzberg', 'SRXT') very moving. I think the bands heart was in the right place on this record.

'The Prayer' sounds more goth influenced to me than R&B influence. The synth in the chorus has Cure written all over it and the rhythms sound more to me like an up to date take on the kind of tribal rhythms that goth bands liked to use in the early '80s.

*influenced

Strongly agree that "England" should have been on the album proper.

Listened to this album repeatedly at the time, but hardly gone back to in in the last ten yers.

"sunday"'s lyrics are super dumb but the melody is so sweet

I'll probably never like "the prayer" even though on paper it is exactly my thing

"sunday" also has an amazing guitar solo, can't imagine the album without that moment

'Sunday' and 'Kreuzberg' feel quite similar to me, and if I was going to choose one over the other then 'Kreuzberg' is going to win.

I'm listening to the album again now and it sounds fine to me. I think Jacknife Lee records usually sound awful, but this is one of his more tolerable productions.

i think ppl's complaints up thread are more about the mastering. lee did a great job on silversun pickups' better nature recently, that record sounds awesome

Yeah, I think he's very inconsistent as a producer, and when combined with mastering that errs a bit on the hot side, it can make the whole thing seem a bit lifeless.

In the case of A Weekend in the City, it was obviously designed to be some kind of "blockbuster" album - a big sounding indie rock record for arenas that was supposed to make Bloc Party a very big and important band (it didn't) and it's mastered exactly in the way I would expect a rock record of that type to be in 2007. It's loud, but far from Death Magnetic/Vapour Trails/Playing the Angel levels of offensive, IMO.

it's just that the low end is real muddy, especially evident on streaming lol

with The Prayer, they talked a lot about wanting to move away from guitar music and only being into dance music & r&b etc at the time and Kele apparently said it was inspired by Busta Rhymes' Touch It lol

i still like the album quite a lot, it was just disappointing as a follow up to Silent Alarm and is kinda frustrating in how it's almost great. not like the albums that came after which are truly bad

I only like about half of the songs on four but I REALLY like those songs

I've never streamed this album - it's def. bottom heavy but my CD copy sounds fine.

In hindsight, I think the band themselves were demoralised by the fact that this album didn't set the world on fire - I remember reading an interview from the time where Matt Tong said they thought the record was going to be well received. The band seemed happy with the end result when it was released.

I don't think Intimacy and Four are awful albums - some of my favourite Bloc Party songs are on those albums: 'Signs', 'Talons', 'Halo', '3x3', 'V.A.L.I.S', 'Better Than Heaven' etc.

They should have broken up when Tong and Moakes left - their last album felt like it was done out of obligation.

I treat The Nextwave Sessions as their final release - 'Obscene' sounds a bit like a 1975 track and 'Montreal' is not a bad low-key groove. None of the tracks are top level Bloc Party, but I'll take it over anything after.

I love "Your Visits Are Getting Shorter", from the deluxe edition of 'Intimacy', but it's definitely more like a Kele solo track.

'Four' has a few really good moments too - "So He Begins to Lie" and "Kettling" I think. Some riffs in there.

I think I made it through 'HYMNS' once.

Y'know, I'm listening to Four now and it's sounding a lot better to me now than it did in 2012 - the only thing that I would immediately change are those bits where Kele is talking nonsense between some of the songs.

this album was ahead of its time

at least from an ideological standpoint

"flux" is wedged into the tracklist on streaming now i see.... incredible song

Oh, it's been like that for ages! After 'Flux' came out as a single, they re-released A Weekend in the City with it shoehorned into the tracklisting. I like it, but I'm not sure it fits.

I remember there being a lot of press surrounding 'Flux' and how it was billed as Bloc Party fully embracing electronic music and how it was supposed to be this change in sound for them - then I heard it and it just sounded like a Bloc Party song, not unusual at all.

... ok it's a little more electronic than that

Well yeah, electronics are used on it, but it wasn't exactly the radical shift in sound it was being billed as. Apparently there were tensions because Kele wanted to go more electronic and others in the band didn't.

some of the stuff on Intimacy really was a radical change in sound for them but I still have no idea what the fuck Mercury was supposed to be

glad this thread got bumped, been thinking about this at least since alfred re-upped his queer songs list and I Still Remember was on it

oh, and flux slaps

some of the stuff on Intimacy really was a radical change in sound for them but I still have no idea what the fuck Mercury was supposed to be

― ufo, Tuesday, August 14, 2018 12:12 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's probably the reason I like it!

'Signs' is my favourite of the "electro" Bloc Party songs, and one of my favourite Bloc Party songs overall. I think it's a heartfelt, beautiful song... so much so that I can overlook the occasional clunky lyric.

yeah I agree completely, one of the few highlights on Intimacy

I'm not huge on We Were Lovers and might take Selfish Son or Hunting for Witches over it

ufo said this and i was like, "wait... do i really need 'we were lovers'???" and then i was like, "the way kele sings 'ordinary man with ordinary desires' in 'hunting for witches' can't keep me from liking it forever" so i redid the order and i think this is the version of weekend in the city i'll listen to forever, better songs, better sequence (i'll toot my own horn here, i also haaaaate the "on" -> "where is home" -> "kreuzberg" sequencing on the og album and was happy to correct it), still-awkward lyrics, 12 songs, 55 minutes

1. song for clay
2. hunting for witches
3. cain said to abel
4. waiting for the 7.18
5. rhododendrons
6. on
7. uniform
8. kreuzberg
9. i still remember
10. sunday
11. england
12. sxrt

(rip "we were lovers" the first b-side i heard from this to make me think "wait, why isn't this good song on that album i love but i wish were much better than it is")

btw "on" is such a wonderful song

Very well.

That moment in 2004-2007 when my college radio students adored this band's every melody feels further away than thinking about 1997 (I don't intend this as criticism, but a comment on how distant this era looks).

it was roughly 1000 years ago yes

and "Flux" is fucking great

this album’s lyrics are like if the line of beauty were rewritten by modern-day morrissey

now you're putting cheese on the trap.

lol

just tried Brad's latest tracklist and it's so good! fixes nearly everything wrong with the album except the clunky phrasing.

On is so gorgeous, I love the strings. it's a very underrated track.

they really did record so much good material for this album, there's so many other good B-sides too, like The Once and Future King, Atonement, Vision of Heaven and Emma Kate's Accident.

i also haaaaate the "on" -> "where is home" -> "kreuzberg" sequencing on the og album and was happy to correct it

I don't - for me, there really isn't anything there to "correct" ...

I love 'Where Is Home?' - love that lyric.

The Once and Future King

nearly included this one in my configuration

i think "uniform" -> "on" -> "where is home" -> "kreuzberg" is a really clunky "aggro -> slow and contemplative transition" that happens twice in a row on the record, it always snaps me out of the meditative state "on" puts me in. which was probably the intention, i just think it sounds ugly and think they had better songs than "where is home"

it bugs me that the album snaps back and forth like that instead of settling into a mood, essentially

Oh, I'd say it was definitely the intention! Y'see, I don't think the events on A Weekend in the City are neccessarily consecutive - some of these things are happening at the same time, and while one guy is trying to escape via clubbing and recreational drug use in 'On', another guy is elsewhere feeling paranoid about recent events in the news and asking himself 'Where Is Home?' ... it strikes me as being quite a personal lyric. It's basically another side to 'Hunting for Witches' ...

I don't think the events on A Weekend in the City are neccessarily consecutive

i... don't think they are either

in my version "england" is essentially doing the "story" work of "where is home"

also all of the lyrics on this record strike me as being quite personal

all of them are about being young and black and gay and going out in the city every night and even in some of the b-sides silent alarm's popularity scrolls by in the background ("success has been cruel" appears in both "cain said to abel" and "once and future king") so, idk, it's pretty much all "personal" lyrics imo, that kind of unmediated expression is definitely what kele was going for but is also ultimately why the album is so awkwardly and clumsily executed bc... he's bad at it. he is constantly telling, never showing, etc. it's kind of the center of everything else that goes wrong with this record, the wild but also oddly-shaped and never quite realized club music excursions that are only made more unwieldy by kele cramming either too few or too many syllables into each line, the choice of songs and the sequence which longs to pull us into this deep sad idea of an album but never actually acquires any focus or direction bc the fast songs are too busy outdoing each other with density and the slow songs just kinda get shuttled between them wherever they arbitrarily fit

A lot of them, yes - 'I Still Remember', 'Kreuzberg', 'On', 'Where Is Home?', even 'The Prayer' all seem to have a lot of personal experience in them. It's one of the big reasons I like the album so much and can forgive some of the lyrics.

(x-post)

the choice of songs and the sequence which longs to pull us into this deep sad idea of an album but never actually acquires any focus or direction bc the fast songs are too busy outdoing each other with density and the slow songs just kinda get shuttled between them wherever they arbitrarily fit

Hmm. I've never found this album to be unfocused - in fact, I think they definitely made the record they set out to make and were happy with the results even if it didn't catapult them to the next level career wise as perhaps they hoped it would. I've always been mostly happy with the artists judgement calls on this record.

i should also say that the telling not showing approach is also responsible for some of my favorite moments of the record like the dumbass-on-paper but gorgeous-in-practice chorus of "kreuzberg"

I've always been mostly happy with the artists judgement calls on this record.

― Le Baton Rose (Turrican), Tuesday, August 21, 2018 9:56 AM (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and i guess i think they had the resources to make a way better record than they did

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP_zrBnC8_0

discipline discipline disappearing echoing echoing exiting

I must add, I think there are a few moments on the record where Kele is singing "in character" rather than as himself. In 'Hunting for Witches', for example. 'SRXT' too, even if he does throw his father's name in there.

'SRXT' is a perfect, if very sad, ending to this record - one of those closers where you have to take a minute or so to gather yourself after the album has finished. The silence after the album has ended ends up being part of the experience.

this is probably my favorite album that kinda sucks

haha yes

that's a good thread idea actually

The odd clunky lyric aside, I actually don't think this album sucks.

(I do wish they'd split up after Moakes and Tong had left, though)

listened to this album for the first time in 12 years last week. i hated it then, but i was 17 so what did i know. I still mostly dislike it but I think it really comes together starting at Kreuzberg, and the last few songs are nice bits of melodrama. maybe it's because the second half is a bit less sonically adventurous than the first half, maybe because they focus less on leaden social commentary, maybe because each song just has 1 good idea in it as opposed to 12 dueling ideas. either way, i definitely appreciate it a bit more than i did then, even though i still think the drums often feel like they're being beamed in from a different planet where a different band is playing a different song.

and i guess brad is otm upthread about the b-sides--my favorite songs on the spotify version, besides maybe srxt, are flux and selfish son

Yeah, there were some fine B-sides around this period, but there's absolutely nothing I would change about this record. The tracklisting as originally released, that is, not the re-release with 'Flux' on it.

need to take a long hard look in the mirror over the fact that none of my previous custom weekend in the city tracklists included "once and future king"

there's always one night per year where the only song i can listen to is "uniform"

it's not as good as any of their records but if you were going to make a timeline of albums throughout history that led to the 1975's career this would have to be on it, which counts as high praise in my book

absolutely