IT REALLY WAS A CRACKING DEBUT SINGLE (74)

I think I should issue the reminder that the heading of this series doesn’t mean that the singer or band in question never released anything as brilliant or memorable as the debut 45.

Bloc Party.

As I wrote last time around when they featured on the blog, (November 2021), it took quite a while after forming in 1999 before there was any sort of recognition.

Come 2004, there was something of a surprising but welcome resurgence in the popularity of angular post-punk music here in the UK, and before too long, a number of groups whose influences had to include Television, Wire and Gang of Four were being played on mainstream radio.  It did prove to be short-lived, but it was fun while it lasted.

It was Trash Aesthetics, a newly formed London-based independent label, which took a chance on Bloc Party.   The first 7″ single on the label, in February 2004 was this:-

mp3: Bloc Party – She’s Hearing Voices

It’s a hypnotic and pounding tune that might have got some young folk off their chairs and onto the floors of the alternative discos, but it really is  something of a disturbing number, with a lyric inspired by a friend of singer/lyricist Kele Okereke who had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.  It certainly wasn’t anything as radio friendly as later singles such as Helicopter, Two More Years or Banquet, all of which went Top 20.

Here’s the two tracks that featured on the b-side:-

mp3 : Bloc Party – The Marshals Are Dead
mp3 : Bloc Party – The Answer

The former has a vocal delivery and occasionally lo-fi production that does make me think that The Fall were more of an influence on Bloc Party than has perhaps ever been admitted to, while the latter is a full-on 100mph assault on the senses that makes me think it was often deployed as the closing song during many of the early shows.

I don’t have a copy of said single, but I did pick them up a while afterwards when they were included on the later Bloc Party EP, which was released on CD by Wichita Records.

JC