Bloc Party
Four

August 2012. "Four", the fourth studio album by Bloc Party is released. 

Do you remember the dynamic rock of Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm? That album was a good example of work born from passion and, above all, original ideas. This latest one, on the other hand, represents exactly the opposite.

Let's take it step by step.

So He Begins to Lie introduces the record aggressively, the guitar riff is nice, but the track remains very confusing; it could have opened the dance in a different way, but the listener might naively think: "There will surely be something better, I’ll continue listening". 3x3 again faces the same issue as the previous track, with a clear lack of originality (relevant cues taken from Muse), it’s another track where the delicacy in the sound that well distinguished Bloc Party from other Independent bands is lost. Then, moving on to the single Octopus, yet things don’t change; here the sound is softer than the two previous tracks but it is marked by an almost irritating repetitiveness, very annoying and totally out of place with the album's start. Okay, Four won’t then be a concept album, but a minimum of coherence wouldn't have hurt. The beginning was not great, but the listener is not discouraged and continues with the next track. The fourth piece turns out to be among the best executed, although it is still forgettable because the lack of originality continues to be felt; the band they are inspired by is clearly the Red Hot Chili Peppers of Stadium Arcadium. However, Real Talk can be considered one of Kele Okereke’s best vocal performances, but nothing more. Kettling returns to the atmosphere of the first 2 tracks, where a guitar takes the scene strongly, but Day Four lowers the excitement with a piece that leans more towards poor Pop Rock, also highly forgettable. Coliseum is yet another song from the album that you will hardly want to hear again, giving the impression that you are listening to a record composed solely of improvisations. By this point, the listener is bored and disappointed, but just now comes the part that perhaps saves the album from the dusty shelf. With V.A.L.I.S. , a regular rhythm finally begins to appear, although the song remains quite bland and repetitive; fortunately, it does not last (like all other tracks) more than four minutes (again, 4 present). With Team A, you get the impression of listening to Octopus again (very original, indeed) until it reaches Truth, which remains a catchy, regular, and well-played track, but nothing more. "There is always too much repetitiveness," thinks the listener. Then comes The Healing which in my opinion remains the best track on Four, quite detached from the random energy or the exhausting repeating of the rest of the record. The album closes with We Are Not Good People exactly as it started and leaves you like that, without a real ending.

Sure, this album won’t make music history, nor even that of 2012, but there is worse out there. However, it is certainly the worst album by the English band, the record suggests that the four (four, indeed) are definitely good performers, but they struggled significantly with writing. Silent Alarm is light years away from this work.

Four is a pretentious and disappointing album, both in the lyrics and in the music. I listened to it exactly four times, then I trashed it. Four is the grade I would give it on a scale of ten.