Bloc Party

A Weekend in the City

"A Weekend in the City" didn't immediately strike me upon the first listen, I must admit. Sure, I loved a fair amount of tracks to consider it a "notable" experience, partiuclarly songs like "Hunting for Witches" and "Waiting for the 7.18" stood out to me as some fantastic, perfect songs in my eyes. But it was only upon repeated listens that I came to this opinion - it is my favourite album of all time, and I'd be hard pressed to name you one that I consider to be on the same level, even amongst my favourites.

The album is essentially a concept album, about exploring a mid 2000s London in the midst of several events, namely the "happy slapping" incident of David Morley in 2004, the July 7th bombings in 2005, and ever-increasing political tension not only in London but the whole of the UK itself, vivid imagery of going to the pub, the monotony of everyday life and the bubbling tension that was slowly growing throughout the UK, the likes of which would lead to the likes of the "English Defence League"(EDL) in the later half of the decade.

Song topics range from sensationalist news reports of crime on "Hunting for Witches" where Kele Okereke laments "I was an ordinary man with ordinary desire," and "Fear will keep us all in place..." amongst some of the more aggressive riffs and drumming of the album, to topics like the monotony of working a job ("Waiting for the 7.18") and suicide on the emotional grand finale that is "SRXT". The haunting gut-punch of "Where Is Home?", inspired by the murder of Christopher Alaneme in a hate crime incident in 2006, of whom Kele was a family friend is complimented with the coming-of-age gay love story of "I Still Remember" and the self-indulgent pleas to "Let me outshine them all..." on "The Prayer" all create a diverse, fiercely political and brutally blunt album, of a young man being increasingly disillusioned with the world around him.

The pleas of "(Give me moments) Not hours or days" on the previously mentioned "Waiting for the 7.18" are contrasted with the defeatist and gut-wrenching lyrics of "Walking in the countryside, it seems that the winds have stopped - Tell my mother I am sorry, and I loved, her." and "I tore down the posters from my wall, left letters for you all..." on the emotional ending of "SRXT" as the sound of a Glockenspiel and the stream of water slowly fade out Bloc Party's magnum opus.

It's an album where you learn that evil often wins over good, that the one thing stopping peace and friendships are humans themselves, contradictory creatures who preach for peace yet get violent when it's most convenient, and how often a confused young person can be led to do one final drastic action to end everything - Suicide. Kele's lyrics lament of a boring life, where the only joy can be found at the bottom of bottles of beer and in pub bathroom stalls with blue lights hanging overhead, the music underneath is tense when it needs to be ("Where Is Home?") and somber and downtempo when necessary. ("Uniform"), ("SRXT") It's a truly magificant album, conceptual, honest, exhilarating at one moment and suffocating the next. It's a world where people grab at each other's necks, rob, stab and murder because they believe that it was their calling to.

I could not name you a better album for understanding the chaos of a mid 2000s UK than this, an album that's both arrogant yet self-reflective, drunkingly happy one moment and depressed at another. An album that laments violence and corruption, yet obscures their thoughts with lines of coke in bathrooms and glasses upon glasses of alcohol. It's emotionally confused, stuck in a world where being neutral often cannot be done, stuck in a place where hatred for each other is at an all time high, stuck in a time where the govnerment would rather ignore the problems then to fix them, because fixing them would admit fault - and they can't do that!

I cannot recommend this heavily enough, words cannot do justice to how incredible an experience this is. It's an underrated classic, and when you get bored of "Silent Alarm" or more modern indie acts in the 2020s, I can only recommend that you listen to this. It's dense, heavy, and with a lot of emotional baggage - but if you can get behind it, accept the faults and appreciate it for what it is - god it is incredible.

Wanna head back?