Bloc Party Intimacy Music
by Bloc Party

About this Music

Following a long run of summer festivals and sold out tour dates,
Bloc Party brings us their newest studio effort. Intimacy is a fittingly
up-close title for an album that is, immediately, in-your-face and
in-your-ear. Bloc Party's third album is a thrillingly radical record,
bristling with percussive innovation, scorching riffs, orchestral
sampledelia, and biting emotional candor.

Bloc Party fans have awaited the arrival of Intimacy, the band's third studio LP, with a mix of excitement and trepidation. Where their debut Silent Alarm (produced by Paul Epworth) was universally touted as a modern classic, 2007's follow up, A Weekend in the City, was patchier. Intimacy is helmed by both Lee and Epworth. Its brittle contours, mish-mash of influences, and semi-awkward lyrics are quintessential Bloc Party. Mixing up everything from micro-house and dub-step, to indie rock and electro pop, there's a willful energy here reminiscent of the band's debut (though the spikier elements are more reminiscent of of AWITC. Opening cut "Ares" sets out the band's stall with a bombastic brew of high-energy drums, preening guitars, and urgent sirens, while upbeat lead single "Mercury," employs a quirky astrological motif. These prove to be the most charged tracks on the record as elsewhere the band indulges in choral-chanting and strings ("Zephyrus"), angsty art-rock ("Halo") and a surprisingly uplifting finale in the shape of "Ion Square." Intimacy is predictably unpredictable: knowingly difficult, defiantly angular, yet eminently likeable.--Danny McKenna