I'm going to talk about something different in this series today. All the other 10 year articles have been about albums that I would consider as classics, albums that deserve to be remembered as pieces of work that either defined the people who made it, or, if they were lucky, something that has a wider influence on musicians today. Instead I'm going to talk about an album, though a perfectly fine effort, had the exact opposite effect as the others. For this I'm going to take a look at Bloc Party's second album A Weekend in the city.
Now I love the band's first album, 2005's Silent Alarm. I think it’s a masterpiece and one of the best debuts of this century. So the expectation in 2007 was high for A Weekend i the City. The band had, very favourably been compared to Radiohead, and The Holy Bible era Manic Street Preachers, as Silent Alarm was seen as an intelligent howl against the pitfalls of the modern world. There were rumours while the band was recording Weekend that it would be an album that would delve into the more experimental aspects flirted with on their debut that they would go full on Kid A. Instead what fans got was something a little more traditional.
Where frontman Kele Okereke had his sights on topics like politics, foreign policy, and racism, albeit in quite cryptic lyrics, on Weekend he narrowed his sites on the youth of the 21st century. Weekend is the first album that I can remember that was about millennials. From the Bret Easton Ellis themed opener "Song for Clay" (Disappear Here), to "Uniform", and lead single "The Prayer", Okereke basically asked what was wrong with the youth of that time. With "Uniform" he painted a picture of conscious conformity with the image of groups of teenagers wearing the same clothes putting a stop to individuality.
There are still socially conscious songs like the excellent "Hunting for Witches" that takes aim at the media for popularising Islamophobia, and more home grown racism, and a poignant romance between to male teenagers in "I Still Remember". The lyrical content of the album should be praised, nut it's the music that lets the album down. Instead of the experimentation that was rumoured Bloc Party went the safe indie route. That's not to say that the songs are dull, far from it, but the likes of "Sunday" are a bit too po-faced.
A Weekend in the City was Bloc Party with their musical claws clipped. For all of Okereke's anger, there wasn't the razor sharp instrumentation to back it up. It's a good album, but it was also the first hint that Bloc Party couldn’t get the fire from their debut back.
