Bloc Party's Silent Alarm Poll

like eating glass vs. this modern love imo

Banquet, the only song that survives.

I know it's just an old track that got tacked on to the US release of the album but "Little Thoughts" is so so so much better than anything else

(also imho it works perfectly in the slot they gave it on the album)

I pretty much hated every song on this album, but 'Compliments' made it to tons of my mixed cds. It fist the vibe I had going on mixes back then with stereolab, the sea and cake, air...

all of you are crazy fyi

like eating glass but i agree that little thoughts would get it were it an actual album track

the jpn ep that came out just before it with tulips, little thoughts & some b-sides is better than the album imo

oh damn ok

did they ever make anymore slow groovy songs like compliments?

1. like eating glass
2. this modern love
3. blue light
4. like eating glass
5. little thoughts
6. positive tension
7. banquet
8. pioneers
9. so here we are
10. plans (mad underrated jam of the album - last minute is my shit)
11. helicopter
12. she's hearing voices
13. prices
14. compliments
15. luno

i voted for "this modern love" tho cuz atm i'm a sucker for fragile sappy shit like that

this album is basically perfect imo but "tulips", "staying fat" and "always new depths" are as good as the best stuff on the album

wanted to put little thoughts on. great song and i agree about the effectiveness of its track slotting.

drummer is such an ice cold killer on this shit

underrated pre-silent alarm track is "this is not a competition"

I love this album like sex and pizza, but I'm going the obvz route and picking "Banquet"

So Here We Are

Very hard. I went for So Here WE Are, but Like Eating Glass very nearly got it. The build up of Like Eating Glass is the best thing they've ever done.

Luno

Not only because it's great, but also because of

http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/newslog/september2004/images/helicopter.jpg

This Modern Love narrowly beats So Here We Are for me, mostly for sentimental reasons. Those two songs > pretty much all other Bloc Party ever. I think it's the snowballing transcendent thing they're going for there, such a shame they went further down the blustery path rather than building on those two songs.

haha i watched that whole desk drumming vid

chicago show

by the way tulips > every song on the record

the best stuff on the last album were the ballads

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Matt DC OTM, but add in Blue Light to that.

i only remember i liked "blue light", "this modern love", and "so here we are" but i forgot how they sound like..

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

no votes for pioneers is a surprise

Oh, I would've given "Like Eating Glass" the win if I'd seen this poll.

Yeah... 12 years on, this still sounds fantastic.

Back then, 'Blue Light' and 'This Modern Love' were my favourites. Hearing it again, 'Plans' now stands out to me like never before.

just saw the current incarnation of the band play this in full and it was really great. they played it backwards which worked well, building to the hits at the start, and then played "tulips" and "little thoughts" as well as a few later songs in the encore. was gutted they didn't play "two more years" though, that's probably their best song. they closed with "ratchet" which was fairly anti-climactic to me but it was a real crowd pleaser? i didn't think anyone cared about that one

Two More Years is so good; it's not on streaming services here tho :(

xp if i bought tickets to see a band play an album in full and they didn't play it in running order i'd be seething!

Yeah, I'm also fond of 'Two More Years' ... I'd be well up for a proper compilation of odds & ends/bonus tracks/standalone singles etc. that cover the years 2004-2013. They've never been anywhere near the same band since the rhythm section left, IMO, so I don't really care about any material they've released after The Nextwave Sessions. Is it just me or does 'Obscene' from that sound influenced by The 1975?

owen fucking crushes this imo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFLcbkOIP-g

just the absolute best record

gonna learn "positive tension" on drums

When the college station got the album in spring '05, everyone fought to check it out and burn. I joined the line and was told politely by the general manager, "You're the advisor, get to the back of the line."

This Modern Love came on when I was cooking dinner tonight. Holy shit this album. I think I'd vote So Here We Are if this was today.

Did LCD Soundsystem do a bit of a homage to So Here We Are with All My Friends? I’ve always felt the vibe was similar.

something glorious is about to happen

real "it's so coooooold. in this house" hours

my heat is in fact out

though not on the album itself, "two more years" is a perfect song

i remember returning this cd to fopp because i thought it was terrible and the guy at the counter just looked at me and shook his head in dismay. have always liked banquet though. maybe i should give it another go

cheers for letting me know of the existence of "Two More Years", ufo. I haven't liked much from this band post-Silent Alarm, so it's cool to discover this new-to-me song from that early era. I see there's also a few songs I've never heard on the early EPs

“Little Thoughts” and “Tulips” are great too.

they have a ton of great non-album material, just from the silent alarm era there's the following non-album tracks and most of them are excellent:

always new depths
storm & stress
skeleton
staying fat
little thoughts
tulips
hero
the marshals are dead
the present
two more years
the answer

"the present" especially is one of their very best too and they just gave it away to a charity compilation.

the a weekend in a city b-sides also have some particularly strong tracks among them, that really could have been a great album if they'd put the right material on it. "rhondodendrons" especially

Thank you for the list! Yeah I really like 3 or 4 tracks from Weekend but as a whole, found it disappointing, and Intimacy ... bleh. I'll check out the Weekend b-sides though

i think AWITC is still good, just disappointing compared to what it could have been and let down by production that didn't really do it any favours. maybe half of intimacy is worthwhile? they really became a band that was absolutely determined to ignore & avoid their own strengths

Of the ‘AWITC’ b-sides “England” is my favourite. Should have been on the album.

“cain said to abel” >>>>>

damn the way i played the shit out of "staying fat", "little thoughts," "always new depths" etc driving around in high school. fuck

I think a lot of bands that begin as "a spectacular sum" on early records will, over time, find the primary creator subconsciously shunting and/or minimizing the work of the other contributors. It's not like they're "determined to ignore and avoid their own strengths" so much as it's a natural by-product of the maturing process. I do miss Tong with the band he was an incandescent drummer

the whole band was pretty direct in interviews for a while about being bored by rock music and wanting to make more experimental music influenced by radiohead, hip-hop & dance music but this often lead to pretty bad and bizarre results, it wasn't just okereke & lissack leading, though it does seem like they increasingly became the dominant creative force as a duo.

there's definitely some of what you're talking about with increasingly sidelining tong in favour of programmed beats etc. on awitc & intimacy though.

then when they did the back-to-basics rock album with four, it was actually the biggest departure for them & showed that they weren't really very interested in what they'd done before at all anymore, they all talked about being really into grunge when making it. you can kinda hear that influence in the heavier sound of it but it's a pretty idiosyncratic (& not very good) album. i saw them live on that tour and they put on a good show though, despite there apparently being a ton of bad blood behind the scenes which lead to tong & moakes quitting a few months later.

they were also regularly pretty disparaging of silent alarm as boring rock music etc. for quite a while, i'm not sure they gave that up until they did the playing-it-in-full tour (which was great even without tong & moakes)

Even though I didn't care for about half of AWITC, I thought they put on an amazing show during that tour (the only time I've seen them). Even the AWITC songs I didn't like were carried by the band's energy. Tong was insane to see live

happy 20th