Bloc Party - Mercury

in three letters. WTF.

That’s pretty much what must have crossed everyone’s mind by now upon hearing Bloc Party’s latest offering. If ‘Flux’ was supposed to be some new direction, ‘Mercury’ is less a bypass, more one almighty spaghetti junction. With, quite literally, too many reference points to mention, there’s little, if anything in the way of guitar, but lots of drum, and plenty of synth for good measure. Darker, grimier, more electronic and yet more urban in the same sentence - nobody would have expected this.

On first listen it’s all too much. Repeated airings actually reveal there is a song under the doom laden growls of electronica and mad as fuck brass sections, however, and a bloody good one at that. If this is Bloc Party’s first stab at heading all ‘Kid A’ on us it’s interesting at the very least, and while Thom won’t be losing any sleep yet, album three has moved from something reasonably predictable to an entirely unknown quantity. Quite frankly, if it’s 12 backing tracks for samba dance classes overlaid with vocals by a Columbian children’s choir, it wouldn’t surprise us after this.