Bloc Party A Weekend In The City by: Greg DeGraves Thu:08-Feb-07 Label: Wichita Year: 2007 WB rating 47 out of 100

They’ll tell you that it’s urgent. That it’s shrouded in mystery. That it reflects the true urban sprawl of inner London. That here we finally have a modern day depiction of the dirt of industrialisation, the bones of dependency, the immediacy of youth. They’ll tell you anything to convince you that A Weekend In The City is something more than average.

They lie.

Don’t give me your propaganda. I have lived in the city all my life, in houses that have views and apartments that thankfully did not. I’ve been there. Once, at the back of a strip club, I saw a man stab another man for reasons unbeknown to me. I’ve slept on a bench at the Botanical Gardens and awoke to find a man going through my pockets like a common sewer rat. I’ve seen boys eat items from bins that were predominately made of plastic. My point... a lot of cracked up things happen amongst the tall buildings. But, to say that the stiff and detached output of A Weekend In The City is the buzz of a million heartbeats is immorality of the worst kind, because you don’t speak for the deviants, the businessmen and the proles with only one bit of plastic behind you (even if that plastic has a million of its clones in tow).

A Weekend In The City is a drawn, mediocre listening experience. For all the crystal clean reception, there’s no depth here – just a fidgety, unrehearsed, nervous, stammering trainee salesman. He’s at your door banging with a big fist, just like they taught him. Sure, he’s got the right clothes, the right look, that big preppy smile, even a Windsor knot goddamit, but he still can’t make you need this product.

Okerele opens ‘Song For Clay (Disappear Here)’ with Muse-like theatrics, the vocals moving from understated to operatic. He may be a mystery to the throng of journalists who desperately dig for clues to his sexuality and a twitching frustration to anyone who is forced to bear a radio interview with him, but Okerele establishes his voice and angular guitar as Bloc Party’s best asset. While it’s about as new as syphilis, ‘Song For Clay’ is a fine album opener, referential to the past but with hints of evolution.

‘Hunting For Witches’ does the most to discredit my very accurate criticisms. Here the hyper, wired drumming of Matt Tong mesh with the thoughts and flow of Okerele’s prominent voice. ‘Hunting For Witches’ is three-and-a-half minutes of above average, commercial-geared rock. Let’s not be delusional, this is about as much as Bloc Party can offer anyone at this stage and that is fine – in fact, it is even slightly commendable.

On A Weekend In The City the listener can feel like a fly trapped in a matchbox. It’s dark and cramped for space; as if a giant, omnipotent hand has lowered the lid and is shaking us for the sheer joy of it, such is the stupid sizing of the album’s production. There is no subtlety, no layers, just bricks of sound. The notable exception: ‘Waiting For The 7:18’ which, when it finally breaks, comes closest to capturing the bliss that Bloc Party are so obviously trying to bottle. The everyman details, wrapped in drama and choir, sound almost angelic. More importantly they don’t sound excessive.

But, this is an exceedingly rare trait on the record. How rare? Well not as rare as your chances of getting scurvy, but somewhere in that ballpark. Why? Because the album is betrayed by a stifling inability to match head and heart. ‘The Prayer’ is a wretchedly prominent example of this confusion and speaks for the overall blandness of the album; Tong’s drums are ultra produced, like some bastardised concoction of an avante-garde football stomp and a rejected Neptunes beat. Okerele is also to blame. His voice, the most commanding asset of any commercial stargazer, is always at the listener. Unrelenting, it is needy and pleading, whingeing and grimacing – closely reminiscent of a toddler with some discarded two-metre long licorice strap, poking and prodding at their mother. Sure, you may stand there, gawking and wishing that you could change places with the kid but in the end you’re left with a headache and frozen peas on your crotch; impotent and drained.

A Weekend In The City screams grey. It does so loudly and repeatedly, hoping vainly, that someone, anyone, is dumb enough to take a second glance.

DeGraves