Shortly before Arctic Monkeys came along, you could divide UK indie into three camps: It started with the Libertines, then came Franz Ferdinand, and finally Bloc Party, a four-piece from London's New Cross. Each songwriter commanded his own archetype—back-alley dreamers Pete and Carl, suave epicure Alex Kapranos, misfit idealogue Kele Okereke—and took a unique grab-bag of influences from the British canon*.* Alex Turner once said he walked "the lyrical tightrope between Jarvis Cocker and Mike Skinner," and while it’s fair to say Okereke, a clumsier wordsmith, is not a lyrical tightrope-walker, he’s a master of the shallow dive. His grand proclamations ("I am trying to be heroic/ In an age of modernity," began A Weekend in the City) scale queasy heights, plummet theatrically, and manage improbable landings.
Bloc Party's last record, 2012’s Four, was billed as a return to form but lacked the cool menace of the early stuff, which channeled Manic Street Preachers as much as Wire or Joy Division. Silent Alarm, their 2005 debut, wasn’t the best UK indie record of its era, but it was one of the savviest, and maybe the angriest. On follow up A Weekend in the City, Okereke wrote boldly about subjects he took seriously—the isolation of modernity, upper-crust London's coke-fueled opulence, the absurdity of MTV, the disappointing political views of teenagers in shopping malls, the selfishness of ex-lovers, and, perhaps underpinning it all, the "2nd generation blues" of a black twenty-something living in a city that wanted to destroy him. Despite occasional misfires, Okereke won us over because he embodied a role his contemporaries wouldn’t touch: that of the outsider genius making sense of a corrupt world through music—music he believed, or refused not to believe, would improve it.
Inspired by a Hanif Kureishi talk Okereke saw in London, Bloc Party’s serene fifth LP observes the void of evangelism in present pop culture, and tries to fill it. But the notion that our jaded generation needs nothing more than a dose of devotional art is tired, and while last-ditch religion per se isn’t Okereke’s ticket here, there’s an awkward sense that the 34 year old is clutching at spiritual straws, rather than relating an honest-to-God epiphany.
The good news is that "The Love Within," Bloc Party’s comeback track, an indie disco-pop hybrid that is somehow both garish and bland, is comfortably the worst song on Hymns. A little better is "So Real," which trails a Silent Alarm throwback riff over low-key soul and hangover-soothing deep house; on "The Good News," a similarly midtempo Blur pastiche, a down-and-out narrator trudges from "the Gospels of St. John" to the "bottom of a shot glass."
That Okereke writes clunky lines by choice is conceivable, and you see why he might: a ruthless commitment to writing economically; overcompensation for the tryhard smartassery of youth; or a self-fulfilling paranoia that jarring sincerity is Bloc Party’s redeeming gimmick, and fixing the leaky roof would require tearing the whole thing down and starting over. It's more likely, though, that between long band hiatuses and sporadic immersion in DJ culture, the songwriter in Okereke has been displaced by some other existential component. "These words will fall short/ But I must try," he sings earnestly on "Exes," and you scratch your head, wondering if that’s what trying sounds like.
In fairness, that song—borne along by sighing chords and a gospel choir—is enjoyably soothing, a highlight on an album that, "The Love Within" aside, hangs together well enough and is never unpleasant. As ever, Okereke’s lyrically inspired moments are not perfect but richly specific and poignant. On "Living Lux," a shattering post-breakup lament, he sings, "I want to spend my money on you." It's a nicely judged line, the kind of faintly pathetic confession you'd expect from the vanquished high-roller we met on A Weekend in the City. Sadly, nine years on, that seems to be the only character he can play with conviction.
