Report: Rockfeedback @ iTunes Festival Night 20 Bloc Party, 20/7/09
4/5
By: Matt Tomiak
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This year, Rockfeedback is delighted to be the official blog partner for the rather exciting iTunes Festival, taking place at London’s Roundhouse every night in July. Over the course of the festival, we’ll not be missing a night, delivering morning-after reports on everyone from Oasis and Bloc Party to Franz Ferdinand and Kasabian playing intimate sets to fans lucky enough to have won tickets to the shows.
The Kraftwerkian visuals and booming, trance-like atmosphere created by Mancunian support act Delphic set the tone neatly, as the manner in which Bloc Party have extended their musical reach beyond the splintery post-punk of much-loved debut Silent Alarm has not (to put it mildly) necessarily found favour with old fans.
Quite unfairly, the disaffected, politically-charged churn of follow-up A Weekend In The City and House-flavoured third Intimacy were deemed confusing and alienating by much of the early BP fan base.
This evening, however, there’s a celebratory feel in the air befitting a homecoming Best Of show: ‘You’re NOT going to give me an average night, are you London?’ grins singer Kele Okereke. Blur’s recent series of enormo-shows may have stirred a mass groundswell of pride and critical kudos, but Okereke’s lyrical images of young London existence, often dismissed as gauche and overly literal, can on occasional feel as moving as Damon Albarn’s. Retaining that peculiarly British mixture of profound melancholy flecked with moments of faith, ‘Waiting for the 7.18’ is, for my money, as potent study of the glimpses of, and gratitude-for, the small-scale escapism that make the daily grind endurable as Blur’s best song ‘For Tomorrow.’
The latter half of the set demonstrates Bloc Party’s resourcefulness, as new hands-in-the-air single ‘One More Chance’ (“Now that was really awesome!” beams Kele) slots in alongside ‘Mercury’, ‘Ares’, a scintillating rendition of ‘The Prayer’ and the propulsive finale ‘Flux.’ Their 2009 incarnation might be nigh-on unrecognisable from the band that emerged half a decade ago, but Bloc Party prove here they’re still worth celebrating.
Artists in this article: Bloc Party
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