Silent
Alarm is imbued with the claustrophobic tension of
early twenty-first century paranoia: the dawning digital age, the burgeoning
East London scene and the Iraq War all are tightly woven into the album’s
fabric. It is a classic call to arms that still resonates in 2015 Britain and
will continue to do so for many years.
There was very little rock n’ roll glamour
about Bloc Party: four disaffected Londoners clad in jumpers and Nike Airs
looked out of place in a music scene dominated by angular hair, leather jackets
and pointy shoes. Looking back Silent
Alarm seamlessly fits into the music narrative of the 00s, but at the time
the record jarred uncomfortably with the contemporary charts. The yelps and
dance rhythms that now dominate dance floors sounded alien on Radio 1 in late
2004. While Franz Ferdinand and The Libertines were simultaneously topping
charts and making tabloid headlines, Bloc Party’s erratic music was making
narrow inroads that would eventually generate its own scene.
Written in London and recorded in
Copenhagen during 2014, Silent Alarm
is an intensely angry LP. From the scattered opening rhythms of “Like Eating
Glass”, to the concluding drone of “Compliments”, the album feels at odds with
the world it inhabits. Friends are dull and apathetic, sex is fraught with
anxiety, and the city is unrelenting. It’s a portrait of contemporary life that
is eerily accurate: it feels like stepping into the internal monologue and
scattered heart beats of a young person trying to shape their place in a world
that is increasingly strange and unknowable.
This sobriety is balanced against moments
of intense beauty. There are few more poignant songs than “This Modern Love”:
Kele Okereke’s ode to fading and bewildering love is the album’s critical
cornerstone. “Blue Light” and “So Here We Are” are also achingly beautiful
points within an otherwise bitter track listing. The latter was a brave lead
single: the chiming guitars and whispered tales about ecstasy don’t fit into
any conventional pop song rulebooks.
Bloc Party didn’t need rulebooks; Silent Alarm rewrote most of them and
paved the way for so much that followed in the rest of the decade. Their
influence can even be seen openly in the current wave of bands championed by
Steve Lamac and the NME. There would be no Alt-J without Silent Alarm.
Silent
Alarm isn’t a perfect record; it doesn’t even
feature the best songs Bloc Party released in 2014/2015. “Price of Gas” is dull
and thumping, “Luno” is chaotic and prickly, while “She’s Hearing Voices” and “Positive
Tension” never sounded half as good on record as they did live. But this record
undoubtedly captured the early twenty-first century’s zeitgeist. The group’s
subsequent albums were never quite able to catch the conflicting emotions that
are tangled at the heart of Silent Alarm.
Ten years old but still going strong.
