SIS At The Club: Bloc Party / Longwave

(Photo by G. Khaikin/iPhone)

It seems that ever since 2005, I see Bloc Party on a semi-annual basis in March. The first was at SXSW on the evening of their stellar debut, Silent Alarm. Two years later it was here at the Orpheum in Boston. Two other times occurred when they did a one-off opening for some Pixies band at Merriweather Post Pavilion, and the last time was in August along with 70,000 others or something before Radiohead at Lollapalooza.

So for the fifth time, in support of their latest album, Intimacy, which is quite awesome and much better than A Weekend In The City, they started off some US dates at the recently opened House of Blues by that baseball field. Since seeing them at Lolla, "Mercury" has grown on me. During said song was highly entertaining: lead singer Kele Okereke was having a stage hand remove the mic stand for him, when suddenly he became tangled around him. He danced around the guy a bit, and finally with a barrel roll, successfully became untangled and at stage right reaching out to shake some fans hands. I have video. It's on my phone. Someday I will upload it to the internet and share with you.

And while they played all the fan favorites and classics ("This Modern Love", "Hunting For Witches", "The Prayer", so forth and so on) for me the second encore proved to be perfect. The two song finale of Intimacy opener "Ares" in to Alarm opener "Like Eating Glass" was like a perfect portrait of where the band is now and where they've come from. The huge drum 'n bass Chemical Brothers freak out of "Ares" and the whole just perfect song in "Glass" it was simply the evening's highlight.

Longwave started up a leg of dates with the Party on this night. Focusing most on songs from last year's Secrets Are Sinister (no "Devil & The Liar" though - tsk tsk), the band also were able to play a few tracks from both There's A Fire and The Strangest Things. Lead singer Steve Schiltz even got a chance to make a shout out to his friends in The Sheila Devine in the middle of one song; it was awkard yet refreshing to know that bands still give shout outs to bands when they are in their territory. I also found out that the band recently joined the ultimately hip as they now have a Twitter account and are giving away a download of Secrets import bonus track "Sideways Sideways Rain". Cool, huh?

Bloc Party Set List
One Month Off / Trojan Horse / Hunting For Witches / Positive Tension / Biko / Waiting For The 7.18 / Song For Clay (Disappear Here) / Banquet / Better Than Heaven / Blue Light / Mercury / This Modern Love / The Prayer /// Halo / Price of Gasoline / Flux / Helicopter // Ares / Like Eating Glass

Download: "Sideways Sideways Rain" [mp3]