Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 05/02/07
Label: Wichita

Last year, The Futureheads were rudely slapped in the face by an unpalatable truth: if your success was (through no fault of your own) tied to the dog's tail of fashion, then you'll likely never grab a hold of it again. Sunderland's finest dropped their terrific sophomore effort and were themselves dropped shortly thereafter. Now, two bands are staring down the face of the difficult second album - Kaiser Chiefs and Bloc Party.

The London quartet's "Silent Alarm" from 2005 was an engaging debut that chimed neatly with the artfully twitchy, punk-funk times but lacked real adventurism. The remixed edition both threw the band's stylistic tics into sharp relief and dramatically restyled them and the fact that it surpassed the original spoke volumes.Frontman Kele Okereke himself has claimed that he wanted follow-up "A Weekend In The City" to be a more focused, forceful and personally expressive affair, and to display more variation in emotional pitch.

It manages fairly well on the first three counts, but the psychic bruising Okereke has sustained playing the East London fame game during the past 12 months has produced self-pitying lyrics that frequently state the bleeding obvious - the euphoria of coke will inevitably lead to a soul-crushing comedown; those who imagine themselves to be fiercely individual wear identikit clothing; the one-night stand is no place to look for love.

Not only that, it does so against a backdrop of large-scale, self-consciously epic emo pop / post rock / neo-prog. It's an amalgam that could serve anyone from Avril Lavigne to Hope Of The States, but reveals that U2 are as much an overriding influence on Bloc Party as they are on Keaneplay. The band may imagine themselves as edgy, but really, they're just close to The Edge, if you'll pardon the pun.

True, Okereke reveals himself (and, for the first time, his sexuality) with admirable honesty, most strikingly in "I Still Remember" ("we left our trousers by the canal"), while the poignancy of "Where Is Home?", which deals with racial violence, stings all the more because of its simple detail ("after the funeral breaking cola nuts"). Elsewhere, however, the catalogued specifics of Okereke's hedonism make him sound like any other disillusioned 25-year-old with money in his pocket and posh restaurants to patronise. Mate, if this life really isn't for you, then just jack it in and do something else.

Of course, most creatives are sensibly advised to sing/write/ paint/act from their own experience, but if you've mined both your ascendancy and your experience of the peak, where to next? Okereke and his Bloc Party must already be feeling the fear.

    by Sharon O'Connell