Bloc Party Silent Alarm CD

Bloc Party: Kele Okereke (vocals, guitar); Russel Lissack (guitar); Gordon Moakes (bass guitar); Matt Tong (drums).
Personnel: Paul Epworth (programming).
Audio Mixer: Rich Costey.
Audio Remixer: Four Tet.
Recording information: Detalab Studios, Copenhagen, Denmark (06/2004-07/2004); Miloco, Hoxton (06/2004-07/2004); The Exchange, London, England (06/2004-07/2004).
Photographers: Paul Epworth; Matt Tong.
Much more polished, serious, and straight-ahead than their initial EPs suggested, Bloc Party's debut album, Silent Alarm, reveals them as a band equally informed by taut art-punk and the grand gestures and earnestness of groups like Coldplay and U2. Though they're not quite as stadium-sized expansive as either of those two bands (yet), Bloc Party sound a lot more comfortable making proclamations like "Positive Tension"'s "Something glorious is about to happen/A reckoning!" than contemporaries like Franz Ferdinand or the Futureheads would be. Silent Alarm is also more varied than Bloc Party's early work indicated it might be, spanning edgy pop, atmospheric ballads, and angular, percussive tracks that are all served well by the album's big, layered production. The great single "Banquet" and even better opening track, "Like Eating Glass," put Bloc Party's heart-on-sleeve emotions in the service of tight, energetic songwriting that makes their earnestness a little easier to swallow. The gorgeous ballads also make the most of Bloc Party's emotional directness: "Blue Light," "This Modern Love," and "So Here We Are" are some of Silent Alarm's finest moments, with a tension and impact that show how powerful even their softest songs can be. As both the band and album's names imply, Silent Alarm is an overtly political album. Bloc Party fare better than many other bands that dip into that fray, but the results are still mixed: the well-intentioned no-blood-for-oil sentiments of "Price of Gas" are heavy-handed, but "Helicopter"'s Bush-bashing and the antiwar "Pioneers" ("We promised the world we'd tame it/What were we hoping for?") are relatively subtle, and work fairly well as political pop manifestos. As dynamic as Silent Alarm is, it's not perfect: Kele Okereke's yelpy vocals get a little grating on the less melodic songs, and the second half of the album doesn't quite sustain the momentum it had at the beginning, although the bonus remixes of "Plans" by Mogwai, and "Pioneers"" by M83 help make up for this. Although it wouldn't hurt if there were more "party" (the celebratory kind, not the political one) in Silent Alarm, it's still a fine debut album with a lot of passion and polish; it's hard not to respect, if not fully embrace, the intensity and integrity of Bloc Party's music. ~ Heather Phares
As the sticker on the album's cover states, Silent Alarm Remixed is "a track-by-track reinvention of Bloc Party's stunning debut album by some of their favorite artists." While it might seem a little soon for this kind of reinvention, some of these remixes date back to the band's earliest EPs, such as the reworking of "Banquet" by Phones (aka Bloc Party and Maximo Park producer Paul Epworth). Not surprisingly, the quality of the remixes varies: Ladytron's uninspired take on "Like Eating Glass" turns the original's fist-pumping fervor into a puddle of synth strings and looped vocals that drown in reverb, but Whitey's version of "Helicopter" -- which moves from xylophones and wolf howls to bare, brazen guitars and back -- is rawer, weirder, and arguably a lot more interesting than its source. Silent Alarm Remixed ends up feeling like a polarized version of Silent Alarm, with both its soft and strident sides emphasized. As on the original album, the prettier moments are often the most powerful ones. It would be difficult to make "Blue Light" anything less than gorgeous, but the Engineers' aptly named "Anti-Gravity Mix" truly is stunning. M83's version of "The Pioneers," Four Tet's "So Here We Are," and Mogwai's "Plans" alsoRolling Stone (p.76) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[Bloc Party is] a visceral, vibrating dance machine....they distill twenty-five years of spiky British rock, from the Cure to Blur to hot Scots Franz Ferdinand..."
Spin (p.64) - Ranked #6 in Spin's "40 Best Albums Of 2005" - "Rarely has romance sounded so expensively, and expansively, sad."
Entertainment Weekly (No. 814, p.64) - "[T]his London gang of four delivers a post-punk mishmash of angular guitars, pulsating bass, and tricky time signatures..." - Grade: A-
Uncut (p.106) - 3 stars out of 5 - "SILENT ALARM's innovation, sense of urgency and sleek production are enough to comfortably elevate Bloc Party above the post-punk rabble."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.63) - Ranked #34 in Mojo's "The 50 Best Albums Of 2005" - "[A]n album super-taut and yet expansive, sinewy yet lush..."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.100) - 3 stars out of 5 - "Ambitious in scope and abundantly stocked with viral melody, SILENT ALARM is hugely impressive....Their future is assuredly now."