Review Summary: Kele Okereke and His Backup Band - Hymns
I refuse to call this a Bloc Party record. I know bands have made switches from one genre/style to another, but some are lucky enough to have pulled off the switch successfully. "Bloc Party" didn't. Here, we see them switch from post-punk revival to indietronica and synthpop. Oooh boy. It's what happens when you get bored of a genre that's practically dead. I'd love to see a revival of it (ha), but I doubt it'll be as good as it was in the mid-00's (Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, Interpol, Editors, Arctic Monkeys, etc.). Hell, even the bands I've listed got bored of the post-punk revival (except for Interpol) and switched genres successfully. Franz Ferdinand switched to dance-punk, Editors switched to dark wave, and Arctic Monkeys switched to a few genres, including psychedelic rock, blues rock, and alternative rock. "Bloc Party" just ends up irritating their fans with this poor effort at an indie pop-focused album.
The songs aren't all that different from each other. Each song is indietronica, some of which are also synthpop. They all also contain bits and pieces of either indie rock, pop rock, chillwave, and ambient. Lyrical themes aren't all that impressive and aren't all that different from each other. And if there's one thing I can't stand, it's Kele Okereke's vocals. He just cannot, and I mean cannot pull off the vocals he does on this album. It seems like falsetto, but I can't even tell, at the same time. I don't know. Whatever it is, it's just terrible. The closing track is just insulting compared to the outstanding finisher from Four, their last album, which is titled "We Are Not Good People". If you haven't heard that one yet, I suggest you check it out and then you'll know what I'm talking about.
See, none of it adds up to anything good. Why did Kele think this would be a good idea? Gordon Moakes and Matt Tong must have disagreed with Kele on which direction the band would take, which is likely what caused them to leave. I don't blame them. I don't know what kept Russell Lissack, though. I honestly wonder if Kele had the balls to continue "Bloc Party" if Russell had left with the others, too. That'd be fully insulting, instead. If this wasn't a "Bloc Party" record and had better vocals than Kele's, I'd bump the score up a bit, but with what Kele's done to "Bloc Party", or better known now as "Kele Okereke and His Backup Band", I have to award it a lower score.
