Album Review: Bloc Party - 'Anatomy Of A Brief Romance''
There’s always going to be the weight of expectation hovering over a band if they shot for the stars with a stone-cold classic album at any point in their career; the fact remains that Bloc Party have not been that band in the most literal sense for a decade. They never got a real chance to pick themselves up and start again until now. 2016’s HYMNS? Frequently beautiful and dazzling, it was still written by Kele Okereke and Russell Lissack on their own. 2022’s Alpha Games? Much delayed by the pandemic, it shared plenty of DNA with Silent Alarm, making a splash but not quite sticking the landing, owing to the fact the band ended up on their third new bass player in eight years shortly thereafter. Given how famously tight the band’s original incarnation was, one wondered if they’d find stability again. Thankfully, they have.
Anatomy of a Brief Romance is literal in its approach, a post-mortem of a year-long relationship that vocalist and guitarist Okereke was ill-prepared for in both its dizzying highs and shattering lows, after separating from the father of his children. Most brutal of all is that he knows this new love is doomed, with the synth-heavy opener ‘22.01.22’ accepting this as a fait accompli: “You are every kind-eyed man I cannot make stay ,,, I wonder what I’ll have learned by the time you walk away.” He’s along for the ride; he just doesn’t expect to be taken for one instead. We’ve seen glimpses of this before (on the brilliantly inventive 2008 surprise drop Intimacy), but this is full concept album territory, folks; with the full band behind it, this unvarnished look at love and loss helps them find their footing again.
Harry Deacon takes up that vacant bassist post, announcing himself by locking in with powerhouse drummer Louise Bartle for an uneasy look at blossoming affection on ‘Coming On Strong’. Okereke’s new man is intense, taking creepshots of him from across the gym floor, and neither of them are afraid to let things get messy, in declarations of devotion (as on ‘Love Bombs’) and otherwise, He can be forgiven a goofy lyric or two, as on ‘Pigwig’, because the impact is everything, and new love can inspire people in all sorts of ways. It’s proven divisive but benefits hugely from album context, the way it soars for the payoff (“That was the moment I knew that I’d been… fooooo-oooound”) is irresistible. He’s stepped back into his own shoes as a lyricist, in a manner of speaking, not to mention the sound of this band in full flight is still something to behold.
‘Lagoon Blue’ gets a title change and re-record from 2023’s comparatively obscure High Life EP, and enters the pantheon of Bloc Party all-timers, recontextualised as the seed from which this album sprouted. A shimmering ode to the intoxicating highs of love and life, it makes the plunge into suspicion and heartbreak all the more punishing. The new lover can’t let the past go on grade-A pop banger ‘Muscleworks’ (replete with lead guitarist Lissack stealing the show at the song’s climax, right before a deft key change), while worries about double lives and shocking exposition on ‘Clark Kent’ tee up an absolute shitstorm on ‘Worst Birthday Ever’; meeting the parents and being completely shut down by his new flame’s ‘pig’ of a dad, expected and unaverted. “Your dad got his wish - his gay son’s no longer in love!” Okereke spits, dramatic tension boiling over and resulting in a spectacular crashout on the hook-heavy ‘Not Your Problem’ as he laments a ‘stolen’ year.
This ‘brief romance’ has come crashing down, hitting like a freight train on ‘Now We Can’t Be Friends’, which dives headfirst into the ‘disco heartbreak’ template that inspired the album, going back to the well that inspired 2009 loosie ‘One More Chance’ with a completely flipped lyrical outlook. There are no more chances, with both parties left to pick up the pieces, as ‘Rotherhithe’ unfolds with devastating clarity, another excellent ballad that serves as the other side of the coin flipped on ‘Lagoon Blue’. The good and bad days are both ‘the breaks’, as Okereke admits he’s scorched the earth: “The only picture I kept was the one of you walking away.” It pairs well with ‘Stories’, as both men examine their actions and look to begin new chapters, a hyperactive guitar burst from Lissack adding splashes of colour into an otherwise ruminative song that begins to lift the veil of heartache.
Bitterness and yearning finally give way to acceptance on closing duo ‘Moving On’ and ‘Eulogy’, each acting as a direct mirror to ‘22.01.22’ and ‘Coming On Strong’ in a neat full-circle moment; the intensity of newfound love gives way to ‘taking a lover in the afternoon’, and the album ends on a note of closure, as Okereke gives his ex an emotional send-off. Anatomy of a Brief Romance adds plenty of new textures and tricks to Bloc Party’s arsenal; it’s diaristic in the extreme, and you have to sign up for that to enjoy the record to its fullest extent, but whether lovestruck or forlorn, seething or healing, the conceptual framework constructed back in 2023 has resulted in the their most focused set of songs in quite some time, with highs that can go to the mat with their best work, a multi-layered collection that scales the renewed quartet’s ambition back up, setting the stage for a band who have finally regained their footing. This party’s far from over.
Words by Gareth O’Malley
