Rip it up and start again

In 2003, Kele Okereke—the industrious frontman for a then-unknown guitar band named Bloc Party—managed to sneak copies of his group’s single into the influential paws of both Franz Ferdinand vocalist Alex Kapranos and beloved Radio One DJ Steve Lamacq. Okereke’s hubris soon became the stuff of art-rock legend. With the help of Lamacq, and Kapranos’ offer to let the band open for Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party signed to Vice/Atlantic and released its debut long-player, Silent Alarm, in 2005.

Almost immediately, Bloc Party seemed destined to become another young, quasi-cursed band recognized more for its trail of hype—NME fawning, hipster clamoring, thin comparisons to Joy Division—than the sounds it made. Two years later, facing down a seemingly inevitable backlash, Bloc Party confronts a classic sophomore conundrum: How does a band tinker its formula to re-excite the streets, while still sounding enough like itself to stretch its cachet?

Okereke and bassist Gordon Moakes are in New York City promoting A Weekend in the City, Bloc Party’s hysterically anticipated second effort, and Okereke and I are trying to make lunch plans. The band’s publicist tells me Okereke is looking for something “really American,” and we arrange to meet at the Waverly Restaurant, a tiny West Village diner with an enormous plastic menu, wood-paneled walls, red vinyl booths and a framed, autographed picture of Mötley Crüe nailed above the bar. Today, as every day, frantic, sweaty servers in black pants and white shirts are slamming plates and saucers into dish bins, hollering into the kitchen and shoveling French fries onto chipped oval platters.

“I Will Survive” is playing on the radio. Okereke is distracted, fiddling with his phone, periodically asking me to taste his water, and whispering about whether the dark-haired man ordering at the counter is actually Al Pacino. Okereke is willing to talk about Bloc Party, although he appears infinitely more interested in conversational strains that have less to do with emergent British rock bands and more to do with Joanna Newsom’s new record or modern American pop music or Beyoncé or the scope of the Waverly’s dessert menu. An hour later, I know that Okereke doesn’t like pumpkin pie or Bob Dylan, but I still can’t quite figure out what it must have felt like for his band to be declared the newest occupiers of Britain’s ever-tenuous rock throne.

Just a few days earlier, after getting injured playing American football, Bloc Party drummer Matt Tong pounded through the band’s set with a collapsed lung and landed in an Atlanta hospital, where doctors intervened, treating Tong and advising him not to travel for several weeks. So Bloc Party was forced to cancel its remaining U.S. shows—22 dates in all—with Panic! At the Disco. “[Tong] was working out so hard for the Panic! dates that he actually destroyed his lung,” Okereke sighs. “He’s a real monster when he plays.” Okereke isn’t numb to the poetic nuance of a musician soldiering through injury, hunching over an instrument despite being barely able to breathe. “It’s a shame it was for a room full of Panic! At the Disco fans,” he snorts, before mumbling something about 13-year-old girls.

Okereke and Moakes jetted to New York for a handful of press days before retreating to London; the cancellations (including two sold-out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden) were devastating to the band and its American fans but, today, Okereke seems almost a relieved to be heading home. “This short stint touring reminded me that we’re going to be going for the whole year next year, so any time at home…” He trails off. “It can be hard being away from loved ones for a long time, but [touring allows for] a very immediate response to what we create. Playing to a room full of people who are losing their minds is a great thing.”

A Weekend in the City is based loosely around the pacing and noise of contemporary urban life—the crush of public transportation, the skronk of horns, the hot hum of 10,000 simultaneous conversations. “I think the actual physical space of the city is fascinating,” Okereke nods. “The speed at which people move—I’ve always been inspired by the rate of cities.” New track “Hunting for Witches” opens with a stream of blips and static, bits of found sound and samples fading into a prickly guitar melody; the cumulative effect not dissimilar to trying to cross town and listen to your iPod at the same time. “It starts with a field recording of me on a train,” Okereke says, “and then walking to my house—it kind of morphs into a song, catching the [exterior] sounds and incorporating them [into the track].” Still, Okereke, who has lived in London since 1988, is now prepared to ditch the city for more novel climes. “I would very much like to leave. I’ve been living there all my life. Everyone I know in London has come to London from other places, for university or for work. I had my love affair [with the city] earlier than most people,” he admits.