Bloc Party Are Their Own Men

11/19/08 1:51pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

British band are proud of their adventurous new album

Kele Okereke doesn't care if you dislike Bloc Party's new album.

"If people don't like it, they're going to have to lump it because we're not going to change," the Bloc Party frontman says while seated in the lobby of a Toronto hotel in early September.

Bloc Party had just digitally released Intimacy, their third album. The record is a huge departure from their Silent Alarm debut and last year's A Weekend In The City, since it features much more experimental material and its songs often wander into territory that could be considered "electronica." Okereke just shrugs when asked if he was worried about the possibility of negative reactions from fans and critics that might come with releasing such a different album.

"I think actually it's just the nature of people to cast things, to like, want to talk shit because now with the internet there's been a real kind of democratization of opinion," he continues, and points out that Bloc Party would probably be equally criticized for sticking to the same sound.

"Everyone's got an opinion. Everyone's got a blog. Everyone writes for Pitchfork. So everyone has an opinion. I think on the one hand it's a good thing, and on the one hand it's a bad thing.

"I can't pay attention to any of it. I don't listen to the positive stuff or any of the negative stuff. That's not why I do this. I know why I do this: because it makes me feel good, not as an opportunity to be a star or whatever. I'll continue to make music even if no one else in the world likes it. That's all I can do."

Intimacy's music isn't the only thing that's different this time around. Though Bloc Party wanted to make Intimacy different from both their previous albums, they didn't set out to be purposely experimental, as Okereke felt that would be "contrived." He only wrote when he was feeling "emotionally charged" and says he only realized once he'd heard the end result that it was "a record about falling in and out of love."

"With A Weekend In The City, its concept preceded the record and people just thought it was this really big statement about the world, which it kind of was in a way. But towards the end of touring I just felt that sort of approach was quite heavy-handed and I hated it, actually. I really wish we hadn't done it. Even though I'm proud of the record, in the same way I hated Silent afterwards, there's so much about it we could have done better.

"That's probably my creative impulse: to dismiss things as soon as you're done. That's why you write another record."

That's also why Okereke says he doesn't care if people don't understand the album, if it gets negative critical reaction or it rubs a listener the wrong way.

"It's like every record that we've released post-Silent Alarm. We released 'Two More Years' and we released ‘The Prayer' and they said, ‘What is this? It sounds weird. It's not what we expected.' Get used to that sensation because we're always going to be doing it. There's no point in nostalgia and there's no point in looking to the past. It's all about the future for us."

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Mercury In Retrograde

Many of the song titles on Intimacy come from Greek and Roman mythology. So does Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke nerd it up by reading about Hera, Prometheus, Achilles and other mythological figures? Um, not really.

"With those songs and titles, a lot of them were just working titles that I became really attached to," Okereke says. "There's no significance to them."

Nonetheless, here's the background behind the mythological figures that pepper Intimacy's titles:

"Ares" — The Greek god of war was born to Zeus and Hera and was the
half-brother of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. The Romans later copied the Greeks with their god of war and changed Ares' name to Mars.

"Zephyrus" — The Greeks believed the god of the west wind brought spring to them. Zephyrus fell in love with a prince named Hyacinth and fought Apollo for him, but he eventually lost, went crazy and killed Hyacinth with a discus. Apollo was so bent up with grief that he and made a flower out of Hyacinth's blood. Emo bands have a lot to learn.

"Mercury" — Although the song title refers to astrology, Mercury was also the Roman god of trade. But this wasn't an original creation, as the Romans got
the idea from the kleptomaniacal Hermes, who was the Greek god of travel,
literature, wit, weights and measures, speakers and invention. That meant he was way smarter than dumb ol' Mercury.

The following feature is taken from the October 2008 issue of Chart Magazine. To purchase the issue, head on over to the Chart Shop.