Bloc Party are about to release their second album.
A Weekend In The City, which promises to be an arresting memoir of front man Kele Okereke's experiences of life in London. We caught up with bassist Gordon Moakes on the eve of their massive tour
loc Party are on their way to the city to showcase their latest magnum opus, A Weekend In The City, which comes out on Monday, 5 February, 2007.
Front man Kele Okereke has punched biting lyrics into the new tracks to capture a reflection of life in a big city - for an album which aims to be harder hitting than the band's 2005 debut, Silent Alarm.
Bassist Gordon Moakes chatted to Zoe Applegate while the quartet were preparing for a warm-up gig in drummer Matt Tong's Bournemouth home city.
With their global road-trip set to run for much of the year, Gordon told us why they're both daunted and excited about what lies ahead, how their sellout Norwich date will be like a home-coming for UEA graduate Matt and why their album had to have a theme.
 First of all, I should start by asking how Matt is?
He's fine, absolutely 100 per cent fine. He's disappeared for the day because he's from Bournemouth and the reason we're doing this show is at Matt's suggestion.
He wanted to do a home town show, but he's actually gone home for the day to hang out with his parents, but he's in very good health.
So what actually happened?
His lung collapsed and when he got to the hospital the diagnosis was a spontaneous lung collapse.
It could have happened at any time so they just re-inflated it and he was in hospital for a week and wasn't allowed to do anything for a month and then he was fine from that point.
You're warming up today for your new tour - how have the rehearsals gone?
Really good. There's only so much we do in rehearsal - you just have to go out onto the stage and play and we've been doing some TV performances in France, so that's really helped to actually put us on the spot and have good versions of the songs so by the time we start the tour proper we should be well on our way.
It's a massive tour and takes in a few countries - does it fill you with excitement or dread?
A bit of both. It's a part of the job that's one of the most rewarding - getting in front of people... making contact I suppose, but the travel can be a bit daunting.
We've got some long-haul flights to look forward to and some quite arduous journeys, but it goes with the territory.
You're off to America again and you've been well-received there when so many British bands haven't - why do you think that is?
I can really only just put it down to the fact that we've never been very British sounding - loaded with British pop references.
As music fans we were always into all kinds of different music from all kinds of parts of the world. We were as much into American noise rock and bands like Sonic Youth as we were any of the Britpop things, if not more.
I think we just sound like an English band in inverted commas. I think it doesn't sound too parochial - it could have come from anywhere in a way.
It's been fairly well-documented that Silent Alarm exceeded your expectations - was there any one defining moment where you realised the extent of its success?
It's not like we were keeping tabs on sales figures every week but when we played Reading in 2005 headlining the second stage, that was a slot I remembered going to see bands as a fan.
The reception that we got on that show... it kinda really did sink home that we outstripped every ambition we had for the band and we'd reached far more people than we ever thought.
You're about to release your second album - how does the sound of that compare with that of the last one?
I'd say it's bigger - that's the simple way of putting it. I think you listen to the first one and it's four musicians in a band.
I think with this one we've really tried to go beyond that and there's more of us - we've multiplied ourselves!
Is it slightly more electronic?
Yeah, that's part of the kind of stuff which we've been trying to incorporate more without being too cheesy and actually trying to be more brave with writing.
The title of your new album, A Weekend In The City, seems to be the theme of it too - how did that concept come about?
As I understand it, we started writing songs and trying to piece together some ideas.
If you trace the few songs we did release off the record - there were only three: Two More Years, the B-side called Hero and then we had this song called The Present which ended up on the Help album for Warchild - there wasn't much in the way of lyrical cohesion to it.
I think Kele decided that a way to approach this would be to come to a decision about having a theme for the lyrics and actually try and bind it together in one piece for the record. It became a way of focusing all of that and the music as well.
At first glance that album title almost sounds like a party album, but there are certain song titles on there that suggest they weren't the easiest of things to write.
My one doubt about having that as the title was that it would narrow the vision of the record.
I think the point is that in the time and the space so much can happen and stem from that and yeah, you're right, there are good things and there are bad things but I think he's tried to be very honest about the way he's tackling all of that.
Kele has been quoted as saying he was disappointed with hiding behind abstraction with the last album - lyrically do you think it's a lot more forthright?
I think, if not the most important thing, one of the most important things about this record for us was for it to be like that. I think it's quite brave to admit that and say, 'Maybe I didn't know what I was talking about with the first record'.
As a band I think we were very much spurred on by our first record in that there were lots of things that we wanted to do differently and I think that for him it was one of the most important things to have.
Is there any one song that you're most proud of?
Good question - I think in terms of the song-writing I love Where Is Home? I think we've thrown in some very non-musical ideas in lots of ways and for it to hang together is an achievement.
What is that song about?
As I understand it, it's a reflection on what it's like to be a second generation black citizen in this country and feeling a bit disjointed and disconnected from your roots and what is supposed to be your nationhood [sic].
That's something that's a lot more personal to Kele than it is to me as a white Anglo-Saxon. I suppose anyone who is an outsider or thinks of themselves as an outsider can relate to that experience.
It's a long tour so have you already got your holidays planned for afterwards where you all jet off in different directions?
We kind of take each country one at a time so we're thinking about the UK tour first, then the American tour, but I know we've got an Australian tour in August.
We've got two weeks off ahead of that, so I think half of the band is going to go out and have a holiday there for the two weeks ahead of that tour.
I don’t know what the end of the year will involve but I'm sure we'll be pretty busy for the rest of '07.
On one of the new tracks, Sunday, you swapped your bass for drums - does Matt need to be worried?
No, not at all. He's the daddy drummer in the band. Famously John Lennon said that Ringo Starr wasn't even the best drummer in The Beatles and I would reverse that with Matt.
He's not only the best drummer in Bloc Party, he's probably the best drummer in the country so he's got nothing to worry about with me!
By Zoe Applegate courtesy of the BBC |
