Bloc Party - Four (2012)

1) So He Begins to Lie; 2) 3x3; 3) Octopus; 4) Real Talk; 5) Kettling; 6) Day Four; 7) Coliseum; 8) V.A.L.I.S.; 9) Team A; 10) Truth; 11) The Healing; 12) We Are Not Good People

Rating: 5/10

It's a rocking and roaring comeback album, but it sounds like the people who least wanted the comeback were the musicians themselves.

Key tracks: "Octopus", "Day Four", "V.A.L.I.S."

That Four exists in the first place is a small miracle. Its gestation was heavily extended due to a hiatus, which largely consisted of near endless confusion on whether Bloc Party had split or not, as Matt Tong definitely left at least once due to creative disagreements and Kele Okereke kept dodging the question while reaping the success of his solo album. But Bloc Party did reunite and Four really, really wants you to believe that they are back together as a band. The album title and the circles on the cover are meant to represent the four band members, the songs are connected by pouts of random studio chatter almost to make a point about the band being in the same room together, and most noticeably there's the sound. Four is a back-to-basics rock-out album, with all the extra elements out of sight and the focus having been placed on the core four instruments. The only thing is, you put this much effort into convincing people of something and it just comes across like you're trying your hardest to convince yourself instead.

It'd be easy to call Four a retread of the band's sound before they started building it up, a return to roots after the complicated Intimacy, but that's not quite true. Compared to the finesse of Silent Alarm where the muscular music was lead by very precise arrangements, Four is a rampaging animal: it plows through with strength and strength alone. It sticks to succinct, strongly punctuated songs that often sacrifice subtlety for power and while that could be really good given the band's strength as instrumentalists (especially if you felt that they had taken some wrong turns on the albums before Four), in reality it ends up hiding their actual strengths. The rhythm section lacks the feel of the past albums, packing a lot of power but not very interestingly. A couple of songs like "Octopus" and "Team A" are built around a more rhythmic skeleton and you can hear how the band feels more alive in them, striding with a bit of groove in a way that suits them instead of just running forward. But then, even in them Okereke ends up falling short - his presence feels phoned in and his lyrics have little of his distinct personality from the previous albums. Lissack is the only who actually sounds interested (and interesting), and on Four he proves that he can crunch a mean riff in a way he hasn’t had a chance to before.



Thus, despite all its attempted push of energy Four is disappointingly muted: a lot more effort has been placed on the concept of the songs than the actual writing, which doesn't work out. Songs like "So He Begins to Lie" and "3x3" have a lot of volume but their aggression doesn't sound natural nor do they really have much of an impact despite the attempted intensity. Four makes a ruckus but fades into the background despite of it, and rarely registers afterwards. On the other hand even in its weakest points it’s never outright bad, but rather just clumsy. The closest it gets "Coliseum" that ill-fittingly moves from a blues twang to borderline hardcore, but it’s just largely really awkward about it. A lot of Four is simply unmemorable, and the reason why is that for all its big bravado about the band as a unit, it's clear that everyone's checked out. This isn’t Kele's best song material, the rest of the crew barely put the effort in to play through it and never are you convinced that this is the musical direction any of them wanted to actually go for.

There is a slight silver lining to be found here and Four isn't without its merits, but it's another damning notch that the best songs it features feel coincidentally so. "Octopus" so obviously rests entirely on its gimmick guitar riff, but it also helps it stand out (and it's admittedly a really fun gimmick riff). "Day Four" and "Truth" are standard issue Bloc Party torchlight moments which likely wouldn't have raised many heads on any other album, but here their more melodic touch and softer pace sounds fresh compared to their surroundings, and they're the few moments where Okereke sounds engaged for a while. "V.A.L.I.S.", too, sounds like Bloc Party on autopilot, but it's the old kind of Bloc Party and in places reminds of when the band's chemistry was actually there to be found. None of them reach any canonical heights but they're the handful of songs that leave you with some impression they were there after the album has finished - which isn’t a faint praise you can hand out to most of the album.

Those songs breathe a little life into the album but once the brutish but boring "We're Not Good People" vacuously thrashes into its ending, Four leaves with little to remember it for. It's not what you'd expect (or want) because for better or worse, Bloc Party have always been memorable. But it’s what you get when no one cares. The four members got together either through some misguided obligation or misjudged interest and released an album that sounds like an awkward compromise made while figuring out if they still had any shared chemistry left. Tong left (again) more or less right after the immediate album cycle had finished and Moakes quietly quit during the break afterwards to focus on his own project started during the hiatus, which makes sense because Four sounds like a contractual obligation before calling it a day. Everyone was already busy making plans for the future that didn't involve the others, and the great comeback turned out to be a stop gap that feels forced even if it wasn’t. For a supposed raw and loud album, Four fizzles out.