Bloc Party – Anatomy of a Brief Romance Review

In the mid-to-late 2000s, Bloc Party had the indie music scene in a chokehold. We had bangers such as Banquet, Helicopter, and Hunting for Witches that flooded the airwaves of every Student Union indie night. It was a flourishing time for post-punk revival and dance-punk. So what happened? Yeah, the indie sleeze movement died off; many of us millennials were thrust into this thing called real life, and sadly we can’t have Bloc Party provide the soundtrack to our lives forever.

But what I didn’t expect was the band to enter this weird era of whimsical after-school programme music with Anatomy of a Brief Romance. An album that was intended to be a postmortem of past relationships vocalist Kele Okereke has experienced, but instead turned out to be a honky tonk retelling of relationships which, deep down, makes you wonder: maybe Okereke is the problem?

Bloc Party was always a band that, in its own unique way, bridged the gap between math-pop and indie with intricate yet catchy lead guitar rhythms, earworm vocal hooks, and a dance-punk vibe that was addictive. After Silent Alarm, A Weekend in the City experimented with more electronic sounds, riding the tsunami wave that Silent Alarm caused before it, and it, too, went down a treat.

The band continued down their electronic route a little more with Intimacy, but it still kept some of the band’s dance-punk core. Even Four, the album that came after their first hiatus, was still very much a Bloc Party album. So what happened? I suspect losing two of the founding members may have contributed, as Hymns, the album that followed, was the start of Bloc Party‘s softer, Okereke-centric sound.

Anatomy of a Brief Romance is, according to Okereke, a concept album that explores the end of one relationship and the start of the next, but it comes across as a bit convoluted and adolescent. The lead single Coming on Strong features lyrics such as “Happy as a pig in / happy as a pig in / happy as a pig in spite of myself” and “He likes the cut of my jub / he likes my skinny fit”. It comes across like Okereke Googled a handful of common idioms to write the lyrics. Then there’s a whole song about his ex checking his Instagram stories, which… yeah.

Let’s not even get into Pigwig, another song mentioning pigs. This track, which was absolutely roasted on social media, has been compared to a song that would fit into the kids’ TV show, Balamory. That’s not to say Okereke has fallen from grace as a lyrical genius; just look at Helicopter (“as if to say, as if to say / As if to say, he doesn’t like chocolate”), but this feels like a new level of bizarre.

Later in the album, we have songs such as Not Your Problem, which honestly feels like a bit of a childish and bitter response to being dumped. This all goes to say that overall the album feels a lot like a pity party. There’s no real substance behind the lyricism in the breakup songs, mostly just blame, and even the love songs feel a little surface-level and clumsy. That’s not to say they’re all bad; there are a few instances where it almost felt like the Bloc Party we knew and loved, like with Lagoon Blue, but there just wasn’t enough to keep me hooked.

In the early days, Bloc Party’s instrumentation really shone with interweaving guitar melodies creating a canvas for Okereke’s storytelling, but this softer, held-back instrumentation in Anatomy of a Brief Romance feels too sparse and almost unfinished. The dance-punk, post-punk Bloc Party of the past is well and truly gone, and that does make me genuinely sad. This album, and the one just before it, solidifies the fact that we’re never going to get another Silent Alarm, and that’s heartbreaking.