The Bloc Party sounds the silent alarm in Birmingham

Block Party | Preventions
O2 Institute Birmingham
Friday June 28, 2024

“Something glorious is about to happen!” » Kele’s heroes have returned to Birmingham for the first time in a long time, presenting their landmark album Silent Alarm to mark its twentieth anniversary. Sam Lambeth dines at a banquet of legendary rock classics.

All In Good Time is the name of Preventions‘ first and, so far, only single, but all in record time would be a better summary of their career so far. Only at their fourth show, The Preventions have already landed a support slot with one of Britain’s most beloved indie stalwarts, with their own sold-out headline set and a Glastonbury gig on the horizon. They have as many Spotify followers as Count Binface has electoral votes. Google tells you you should search for a Cornish outfit called ‘Prevention’ instead.

Of course, none of this will last. Polished but still adorably disjointed, the band toes the line between Catfish-esque deep-throat rock and Smithian beauty. Their singer (whose name we can’t find because this band is so unknown, people), who looks like a thrift store Targaryen, has stage presence to a T and wears his influences on his sleeves. “I used to play FIFA ’05 and hear Bloc Party’s song Helicopter, and it made me want to play guitar,” he beams. He’ll prove it later by spending most of Bloc Party’s set headbanging and crowdsurfing. Bigger things await.

Does anyone know Bloc PartyKele Okereke’s trajectory and ethics should now know one thing: expect the unexpected. Originally billed as the heirs apparent to Franz Ferdinand in the heroic, tacky indie dancefloors of 2005, Kele Okereke and company have since enjoyed a career that has continued to surprise and challenge. Solo escapades, forays into dance music, a free album and more inter-band turbulence than Sugababes and The Fall combined, so it’s no surprise that, despite tonight’s show being billed as a celebration of Silent Alarm’s 20th anniversary, they don’t play the album in order.

They arrive just after 8:30 p.m. to greet a sold-out O2 Institute, mostly filled, perhaps surprisingly, with sparkling young indies – many wearing sunglasses indoors, either as an accessory to rock coolness or as protection against glaucoma – which would still have been nestled safely in their father’s testicles when Silent Alarm was first released.

Most of the class of 2004/05 – think Franz, Kaiser Chiefs, Maxïmo Park – have all aged well and all have a certain sense of current affairs, and Bloc Party is no exception. Their music draws inspiration from the indie-punk disco of The Rapture and LCD Soundsystem, the jagged indie of Wire and the introspective rock of Radiohead. It’s no surprise that many contemporary bands, including emo holdovers Paramore, cite them as enduring influences.

What keeps Silent Alarm apart is its unbridled urgency. Like Eating Glass is an explosive, angular rocker built around guitarist Russell Lissack—proof that a haircut is enough—and his edgy, tense riffs. Similarly, Positive Tension builds from a tense rumble to a hilarious crescendo of Okereke’s shrill vocals and hyperactive drums, originally perfected by Matt Tong but here played to perfection by the relentless Louise Bartle.

Like many of his early, seminal albums, Silent Alarm managed to capture a particular feeling and moment while remaining timeless. The sense of youthful ennui, boredom, disenchantment and loneliness runs through the album like rock. They were grand statements without resorting to Bono-style platitudes, ambitious anthems that were unpolished to the point of being bland in arenas, and Blair-induced frustrations that enveloped many young people, disenfranchised in the mid-2000s. And yet all of these emotions still resonate in Britain today – many will feel the anger at modern politics tonight just as acutely as they did when they first heard the spiky Helicopter two decades ago.

Alongside the thrilling She’s Hearing Voices and the plangent Plans, there are moments of delicate tenderness that show another side of the London band. Tonight they open with So Here We Are, this opening riff a beacon of nostalgia before building to a euphoric climax. Blue Light shows that they can keep the tension and snap of their more frenetic moments into something gentler. And when the band closes their set with the haunting This Modern Love, those who were there in 2004 all look at each other as if to say “Yeah, I was listening to that in my room when I was 15.” The fact that there are many children in the room tonight shows that this legacy will continue unabated.

Between the two, however, the group sings nearly 30 songs spread across its catalog. Okereke is present throughout the concert to offer polite and ironic vignettes, reneging on his agreement not to drink alcohol by cheerfully requesting champagne and asking the audience if they feel “sexy” before launching into the new single Flirting Again.

The rest of the set looks to the past, starting with the melodious post-punk comeback Skeleton. The band have dug up tracks from their Little Thoughts EP all the way up to their latest album, the reborn Alpha Games. With each new Bloc Party often born out of trying times, it’s always impressive that Okereke and company come back with records that remain a wonderful juxtaposition of the literate and the down-to-earth, the muscular yet tender, the adventurous yet familiar. The politicized sting of Hunting for Witches and the dissonant thrum of The Prayer recall the early seeds of their growing ambition, while the dance-inspired zip of Flux and One More Chance prove that bands like Foals and Alt-J owe Bloc Party a considerable debt.

“I’ve got a train to catch, so we better get going,” Okereke laughs toward the end of the show, his tie-dye shirt now laden with sweat. A stunning album played over a set of intelligent, empowering, endlessly danceable anthems? It would be worth shelling out a cab fare for.

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All words by Sam Lambeth. Sam is a journalist and musician. More of his work for Louder Than War is available in his archive. His music can be found on Spotify.

All photos by Paul Reynolds. You can find him on Instagram.