Bloc Party
Anatomy of a Brief Romance
CONTAGIOUS
In 2022, Hayley Williams had nice things to say about two highly influential UK indie bands: Bloc Party and The 1975, the latter of which was almost definitely influenced by the former. At the time, Bloc Party had recently returned with their first album in six years, Alpha Games, which recaptured and slightly updated the urgency of their early material. Despite the band’s absence, frontman Kele Okereke had spent the early pandemic years, much like Williams, fleshing out the experimental edges of his songwriting with a solo effort, whose reflective approach extended to a pair of subsequent records. Now, Bloc Party are back with an album whose title recalls The 1975’s epic 2018 LP A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships. Although somehow spanning nearly as many tracks, Anatomy of a Brief Romance shares none of that album’s grand scope, boundless ambition, or meticulous production. Perhaps it possesses the same fearlessness to fall flat on its face—except that, more often than not, it actually does.
For one thing, the title is painfully literal: The album chronicles the rise and fall of a year-long romance that began after Okereke broke up with the father of his children. Instead of being analytical or even contemplative about it, these songs scan the bones of a relationship for evidence of a compelling narrative—even lays it out for all to inspect—but repeatedly comes up short. “Turns out that you’re not the chapter I thought you’d be / More like a footnote in my story,” Okereke admits on “Stories,” the one point on the record that does reference the online component of a relationship: “You say today is a new day / But I see you’re still watching my Stories.” The album, too, feels like a scattered afterthought more than an important part of the band’s journey.
Even if it were a glorious reinvention of the Bloc Party sound (if anything, the band often struggles to accommodate the emotional arc of a story that itself feels sealed off from the rest of the narrator’s life), not much could salvage Okereke’s lyrical missteps, which stand out on nearly every song. The first couple of tracks are dynamic enough—the gentle, Postal Service–esque vulnerability of “22.01.22” juxtaposed with the muscular, roiling groove of “Coming on Strong”—but it’s hard to justify why, on the latter, Okereke dramatically punctuates the final word on the line, “He’s the one I can be chill…with.” The shimmering infatuation of the album’s first half can be summarized by the “Every day is such a vibe” chorus of “Pigwig,” which one can only hope is at least partly ironic.
In fact, the caustic element of Okereke’s writing that shot through Alpha Games doesn’t really make itself heard until the album’s embittered second half, which is worse enough to leave you craving the middling sweetness of the opening “chapters.” Its disjointed musicality becomes hard to ignore: there’s hardly any tension to signal the rising suspicions in “Muscleworks,” which invites comparisons to Lily Allen’s West End Girl, despite Okereke’s best intentions. The integration of musical theater tropes feels sincere but awkward on tracks like “Worst Birthday Ever” and “Now We Can’t Be Friends,” faring better with the ballad-like presentation of “Rotherhithe,” which is more in line with Okereke’s recent solo work.
Nowhere is the jumble of ideas more representative of the album’s lack of intention than on closer “Eulogy,” which concludes, “I guess what I learned from you / Is love means different things to different people.” It’s unlikely Bloc Party will be teaching this class again (“I don’t want to sing about love and desire anymore,” Okereke told Rolling Stone), and you won’t miss much by skipping it.
