Bloc Party :: "One More Chance"

Bloc Party are back with another single, out mid-summer. And, again, it's bound to make people upset.

If you thought "Mercury" was a jag off the reservation, you probably won't like "One More Chance." In fact, the first ten seconds of the track are unrecognizable as Bloc Party - it sounds more like prelude to "Rhythm Is A Dancer." But, Kele's vocals explode into the mix and from there on the song mirrors the narrative of "Flux." Which is to say: if you weren't expecting prototypical Bloc Party, you might like it - but if you were expecting Silent Alarm, this will be another chance to say, "what happened to this band?" or "what the hell is this?" So more specifically, "One More Chance" is more a creature of your expectations than it is a stand-alone piece of art.

This band, in visual metaphor, is like a wild animal. Silent Alarm dropped and we discovered them in the wild - relatively untouched and unaffected. We had a little window into the band's sound, largely unfiltered and seemingly pure. And then we brought them to the city. Like putting King Kong in New York, it wasn't a wonder that the band changed. It wasn't any wonder that they wrote A Weekend In The City. It was urban and anthemic and a little pleading ("tonight make me unstoppable"). It was what they thought we wanted. And instead people ripped them for either being too safe or not safe enough. In an unbelievable turn of events, Bloc Party was accused of not being "Bloc Party" enough.

So they disappeared for a year, emerging only to release "Flux" as an early "eff you, we'll be what we want to be," returning a year after that with the left-hook of Intimacy. We tried to domesticate the animal, tried to teach them our tricks, to colonize their sound with our desires. And they learned just enough to flee the city. They ripped their tracking devices off and headed for the woods. They fled the radar screens, fried the matrix, and didn't just color outside the lines, they burned the coloring book. They started talking about the apocalypse, about crushing break-ups, about redemption ("Ion Square") but redemption on their own terms. They went back to nature.

"One More Chance" is a club-burner and it wasn't what you expected. Give up. This band isn't going to try to be what you wanted ever again. They're off the reservation. And it's great.

Listen :: Bloc Party - "One More Chance"