Bloc Party at SummerStage Central Park

Kele Okereke

Kele Okereke (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards, sampler) and Russell Lissack (lead guitar, keyboards) first met in 1998 in London, England. A chance encounter at a music festival in 1999 led to them committing to forming a band. They used several names before settling on Bloc Party in 2003. The band got its break after Okereke gave a demo copy of "She's Hearing Voices" to radio personality Steve Lamacq. Lamacq subsequently played the song on his program, labeling the track "genius," and invited Bloc Party to record a live session for the show. In 2005, Bloc Party's debut album, Silent Alarm, certified platinum, selling more than a million copies worldwide. After more successes, the band went on a hiatus in 2009 to focus on side projects. The musicians reunited from 2011 to 2013, then resumed the hiatus to continue with their respective side projects. In 2015, Okereke and Lissack recruited Justin Harris (bass guitar, keyboards, saxophones, backing vocals) and Louise Bartle (drums, percussion) and released Bloc Party's fifth and most recent studio album, Hymns, in 2016. Bloc Party has sold over three million albums worldwide.

Bloc Party began playing its seminal  2005 debut album in its entirety in Europe in 2018 and this summer brought the Silent Alarm concert to select cities in the United States. Although it was the current incarnation of the band and not the original lineup that originally recorded the album, tonight's SummerStage concert at Central Park's Rumsey Playfield showed the maturity of the band's vision, as the album was performed with perhaps more finesse than on the original recording. Okereke and Lissack drove the songs, but the subtle star of the evening was Bartle, whose imaginative drumming turned the songs into suites. Perhaps acknowledging the dichotomy that albums generally start with the strongest songs and concerts end with these heavy hitters, Bloc Party played the album in reverse order. Beginning with the softer and more ambient songs, the band worked its way to the crowd-pleasing indie-rockers. The band also included UK bonus track "Little Thoughts." For the encore, the band returned with two Silent Alarm era b-sides and three later songs. The current Bloc Party proved it can play its old songs perhaps better than ever.

Setlist:

1. Compliments
2. Plans
3. Luno
4. So Here We Are
5. Little Thoughts
6. Price of Gasoline
7. The Pioneers
8. This Modern Love
9. She's Hearing Voices
10. Blue Light
11. Banquet
12. Positive Tension
13. Helicopter
14. Like Eating Glass
15. Encore:
16. Skeleton
17. The Marshals Are Dead
18. The Prayer
19. Flux
20. Ratchet