They sound like tricks.Īnd then there’s the anthemic stuff. The problem is, the tricks disguise nothing. Lee has done everything in his power, actually, to turn Okereke into a distinctive vocalist: he’s added “ahhhh” vocals to the background (“Sunday”), he’s tracked a second Okereke an octave below himself for an entire song to add strength to a particularly poor turn (“Where is Home?”), he even throws a flange on him for a second or two at a time (“Waiting for the 7.18”). As it is, it’s fairly torturous hearing such a wonderful refrain surrounded by such a mess. A Weekend in the City, however, has moments like the verse of “The Prayer”, an atonal mess of flat singing and multitracking in a song that also happens to have what might be the most beautiful chorus Bloc Party has ever written - if anything else in the song could have gotten off the ground, it would be an unforgettable classic. And that’s fine, as long as it’s what the songs and the music call for - his unique, distinctive, and pleasingly untrained voice was perfect for Silent Alarm, a setting more suited to raw emotion than any sort of musicality. Either way, the result is a band that is playing to its greatest weaknesses, never managing to prove that those weaknesses will ever be overcome.Īt the forefront in every sense is vocalist Kele Okereke, the face of the band, a face that bleats and grunts as much as it actually sings. Or, perhaps, Bloc Party chose to adapt to him, in the hunt for greater exposure and an expanded audience. Without going into which band is better than who, the production approach needs to completely change when you’re going from a band that writes anthems to a band that writes white-hot fireballs. Snow Patrol and U2, for all of the differences between the two bands, get by on anthemic gestures and soaring vocal turns. Bloc Party made its name on Silent Alarm as a little-band-that-could type that gets by as much on pure, unbridled energy as it does on any sort of strength in its songwriting. The problem is, Bloc Party is not Snow Patrol.
As such, it only makes sense that he would bring many of the same tricks and the same sensibility that he brought to those bands along with him on his stint at producing Bloc Party for its latest album, A Weekend in the City. Lee was even the man tapped to remaster the entire U2 backcatalogue for release on iTunes. I should explain: The recipients of Jacknife Lee’s two highest-profile production jobs thus far have been Snow Patrol and U2 - both of Snow Patrol’s big hit albums ( Final Straw and Eyes Open) were produced by Lee, and his involvement on U2’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb won the producer a Grammy. Would it be unfair to blame Jacknife Lee for this?
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