Gig review: Bloc Party, Garage, Glasgow

By DAVID POLLOCK
Published on 21/06/2012 02:43

“It’s been a while,” noted Bloc Party singer Kele Okereke two songs into the show. It has indeed, but not quite the eternity we might have expected.

The word on the street many months back was that this band were all over, following Okereke’s decidedly more dance-orientated solo career. Yet this summer they release a new album Four – their fourth and their first in four years – and this gig was, as the singer explained, their “first proper show back”.

Expectations appeared to be higher than ever, if anything, and it was a set worthy of a large concert hall played in an intimate club environment, with a lightshow of strobes and lasers blazing away in the background. As a chance to nail ring-rusty versions of old favourites it was a success, with the yearning holler of Mercury, the taser-effect guitar of Hunting For Witches and the pint-chucking, air-punching crescendo of Song For Clay (Disappear Here)’s segue into the post-punk howl of Banquet a series of continual highlights.

The new songs, too, were a mixed and satisfying bunch, from the deliberately hesitant stumble of Octopus to the latterday Blur imitation Real Talk. Truth was a delicate anthem but Team A was the real triumph, careening in on a vicious guitar line and then building determinedly on a heap of battering power chords. It stood capably alongside anthems like Helicopter, Ares and Flux, and lent the ring of truth to Okereke’s declaration that “this is the best possible start to the return of Bloc Party I could ever imagine.”

Rating: ****