Like Eating Glass
Posted on | May 17, 2005 at 6:08 pm | 7 Comments
According to the music critics, I’m supposed to like the album Silent Alarm by buzz band Bloc Party. But really, though they do sound somewhat BritPop, they sound nothing like the “new wave” (ha ha) of other Brit bands that I like and which they’re supposed to be on the same wavelength as (Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, Dogs Die In Hot Cars, The Killers – okay, The Killers are American and DDIHC & FF are Scottish, but you know what I mean). Nor do they sound like the older bands I see them compared to (The Cure, Blur, etc.). The songs all sound somewhat the same and the vocals annoy me for some reason. There’s just not much of that melodic catchiness that I so crave. But I will give it another listen. I’m glad I downloaded it from eMusic instead of buying the CD.
Latre.
Comments
7 Responses to “Like Eating Glass”
May 18th, 2005 @ 3:19 pm
I’m listening to it for the second time now and like it better — seems substantially hookier. I’m still glad I didn’t part with real money for it. I think track 12 (Luno) is my front runner for me.
Part of what bothers me about these bands is that the actual 80s art-punk/edgier side of new wave was about trying to defy convention. When making that kind of music becomes a convention in and of itself, I think it’s fundamentally untrue to the principles of the art that it evokes. And I still feel like I’d like these new bands better if more of them were more explicitly political, a la the original Gang of 4, McCarthy, etc. Not that all of the first wave were explicitly political. Still.
May 18th, 2005 @ 8:31 pm
“trying to defy convention”: I get that…but I think anytime you become smitten with an older style, you can’t bring along its cultural (or musical) context. I don’t know the Bloc Party record (the name is terrible), but if they were trying to defy current musical convention, they wouldn’t sound like the ’80s music they’re (apparently) trying to emulate. Or create more of, to be fair. Rather than fill up Rog’s comment space, I might say more about this over at my own…
May 18th, 2005 @ 8:34 pm
I understand what you’re saying doug, but I have no problem with the separation of music and politics. Aside from personal politics, of course.
May 19th, 2005 @ 2:07 pm
Though it’s really easy to play “spot the influence” with the Bloc Party, I can’t help but hear them as this really efficient machine that spits out hooks the way an injection molder spits out widgets, and I’m actually quite OK with them at that level.
May 19th, 2005 @ 2:11 pm
Okay, doug and dave, I’m really going to have to listen a second time and try to locate those hooks. I really didn’t hear any the first time.
May 20th, 2005 @ 7:01 am
Admittedly, I spend a lot of time listening to things where the definition of “hook” encompasses things other than “really great chorus”, “great riff”, and “my, what a smashing bridge”, so there’s the real possibility that my personal definition of “catchy” has been irreversibly debased by decades of breakbeats, found sounds and glitch loops.
May 20th, 2005 @ 1:56 pm
in case i didn’t make it not clear above, the first time i heard it i didn’t think it was at all hooky. it only struck me that way on a second (and possibly more attentive) listen.
maybe my next project should be a thirteen song cycle set in Thatcherian england. the single could be, “(why don’t you want to) smash the state with me, pretty party boy?”