By contributing writer Samir Mathur (Twitter)
Pic credit: Nicholas Ware
Pic credit: Nicholas Ware
It did not begin promisingly. For the first ten minutes, the
best ovation from the crowd seemed to be for the strobe lights during the freak
out at the end of opener ‘So He Begins To Lie’. Both audience and band seemed
disappointingly flat. This was only the second date of Bloc Party’s latest U.S.
jaunt, and the first time they’d played in Orlando for many years, so nobody
had any excuses. The band’s latest album, ‘Four’, came out almost a year ago,
and certainly hasn’t taken off the way its predecessors did. Hearing ‘Real Talk’
in between the vastly superior ‘Positive Tension’ and ‘Waiting for the 7.18’
makes this abundantly clear. It’s not until ‘Banquet’ that everyone seems to
wake up. That song is still as fresh as it was in 2004, and it’s followed – as it
is on ‘Silent Alarm’ – by ‘Blue Light’, which unites the full house in a big
singalong.
Things pick up from there. ‘Where Is Home’ is dedicated to
Trayvon Martin, which give its lyrics extra poignancy. ‘One More Chance’ has
house-music-style pianos, and Russell Lissack’s guitar does indeed make those
cool reverb noises on ‘Octopus’. During the encores, Kele Okereke lightens up
at last, and jokes with the crowd prior to a furious ‘Ares’. Before ‘Flux’,
they do a few bars of Rihanna’s ‘We Found Love’, and everyone loses their shit
for ‘Helicopter’. During a second encore, there’s a brand new song called ‘Ratchet’,
which suggests a return to the looser, dance-music-influence of ‘Intimacy’.
They close with ‘This Modern Love’, a song as lovely as it was when we first
heard it, which serves to remind me of how long it has been since I was in
college.
So Bloc Party won me over eventually – wish it hadn’t taken
as long as it did, and that they’d found space for ‘Little Thoughts’. There’s
always next time.
