Bloc Party

Two guitars and a small ad

Bloc Party began with a conversation at Reading Festival in 1999, where Okereke and Lissack met and agreed to try writing together. The rhythm section arrived by more ordinary means: Gordon Moakes answered an advertisement in NME to play bass, and Matt Tong came in on drums after an audition. The four of them cycled through other names before settling on Bloc Party in September 2003.

What followed was quick. 'Silent Alarm' came out in 2005 on Wichita, with Atlantic handling the United States, reached number three on the UK albums chart and went platinum. It was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize that year and took NME's best album award. A debut that lands like that becomes a problem as well as a calling card, and the band have spent two decades negotiating with it.

Five more albums and a new rhythm section

'A Weekend in the City' followed in 2007, reaching number two in the UK and number twelve in the United States — a denser, more orchestrated record that has aged into the fans' connoisseur choice. 'Intimacy' in 2008 pushed further into programming and sampling, charting at eight in the UK and eighteen in the States. 'Four', released on Frenchkiss in 2012, went to number three at home and thirty-six in America.

Then the original four came apart. Tong left in the summer of 2013, during a festival run, after a falling-out with Okereke over conduct within the touring party. Moakes went in March 2015, having described Tong as the band's heartbeat. Louise Bartle took the drum stool that year and Justin Harris, bassist in Menomena, came in on bass; both debuted on 'Hymns', released by Transgressive in 2016. 'Alpha Games' arrived in 2022 through Dew Process, and in 2023 Harry Deacon replaced Harris.

The practical consequence is that the band playing these songs now is half new. Bartle has been behind the kit for over a decade, and Deacon's three years in the group cover the whole of the current album cycle.

The anniversary years

On 8 July 2024 Bloc Party headlined Crystal Palace Park in south London, the largest show they had played to that point, with The Hives, Friendly Fires, The Mysterines and Connie Constance beneath them. They had been understood to be playing 'Silent Alarm' in full; what they actually delivered was ten of its tracks threaded through later material, with 'The Pioneers' and 'Luno' left out — a decision some of the crowd took badly. Okereke told the park: “The journey has been twisted. There's been lots of changes.”

Rolling Stone UK's Will Richards scored it four out of five, reading the night as a celebration of twenty twisted years rather than a nostalgia exercise, and singling out the 'A Weekend in the City' songs as the high points. He also noted the composition of the audience: indie fans in their thirties standing alongside a younger contingent who had found the band through Saltburn and recent touring.

In May 2025 the original four-piece were given an Ivor Novello award for Outstanding Song Collection, while the touring band carried on with dates marking twenty years of the debut and twenty-five years of the group.

Trevor Horn and a twelve-month affair

The seventh album was recorded in late 2025 at Trevor Horn's studio in Belsize Park, with Horn producing. Okereke has been unusually direct about why: an eleven-year relationship ended, another one started and lasted about a year, and he wrote the whole thing down in sequence. “Every lyric you're hearing on this record was something that actually happened to me. I had to tell the story, from start to finish,” he said on announcing it. Elsewhere he has described the imagery as having “happened and comes from a real, honest place”, and called the Horn collaboration disco heartbreak.

'Anatomy of a Brief Romance' runs to fourteen tracks and was released on 11 September 2026 through Contagious Ltd via Virgin Music Group. The singles trace the narrative in order of release: 'Coming On Strong' on 12 May, 'Love Bombs' on 30 June, 'Now We Can't Be Friends' on 28 July, 'Pigwig' on 18 August and 'Lagoon Blue' on 7 September. Okereke framed 'Now We Can't Be Friends' as a song about going back out clubbing and steering clear of an ex on the dancefloor: “You can have these big feelings, but you have to be aware that when they go, this is how you'll feel and you'll be OK with that.”

Song titles such as '22.01.22', 'Worst Birthday Ever' and 'Eulogy' do the chronology no harm. Of 'Coming On Strong', Okereke said he liked that it sounds “dark, sinister, like something is creeping up”.

A divided reception

The album entered the UK chart at number six, took number two on the UK independent albums chart and number seven in Scotland. Critically it landed in the middle: Metacritic logged a weighted average of 53 from eleven reviews, its lowest band for a Bloc Party record in some time.

The defenders made the case for the concept. DIY gave it three stars and called it “a bold, personal, narrative work that justifies Bloc Party's existence far beyond their debut”, noting that it welds the angular guitar writing of the debut to the electronics of 'Intimacy' and reading it as the group's most openly queer work. The Irish Times judged it one of their most engaging records since 'Silent Alarm'. Under the Radar's Jimi Arundell described a candid account of the giddy highs and petty lows of a relationship.

The objections were about sound rather than subject. Pitchfork's Will Lynch wrote that “musically, the album has none of the spiky verve that once set Bloc Party above their peers”. The Fire Note found that fourteen songs of restrained arrangement left the record “searching for a spark”. Clash allowed that some lyrics verge on cliché and that the closing stretch indulges the self-absorption heartbreak brings. Both camps are arguing about the same thing: Horn's gloss sits very differently from the band's first three records.

Where they are in October 2026

The band spent July 2026 in North America, playing amphitheatres in support of Muse and adding five headline shows of their own: Nashville's Ryman Auditorium on 8 July, Theatre Beanfield in Montreal on 16 July, Globe Iron in Cleveland on 20 July, the Roxian Theatre in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania on 21 July and The National in Richmond, Virginia on 27 July.

Release week was given over to British record shops. The in-store run opened on 9 September at Wax and Beans in Bury and took in Banquet at Circuit in Kingston on 10 September, Jacaranda Baltic in Liverpool on 11 September, Rough Trade at the Palais in Nottingham on 13 September, Rough Trade Bristol on 14 September, Rough Trade East in London on 15 September and Crash at Stylus, Leeds University on 17 September.

The next move is the big one. Bloc Party and Interpol are splitting eighteen UK and European arena dates, their first joint touring since a 2004 UK run and co-headline shows in Australia in 2023. The European leg goes from 10 November at Copenhagen's Royal Arena through Berlin, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels to 18 November. The UK and Ireland leg opens at Birmingham's Utilita Arena on 20 November, takes in Cardiff, Sheffield, Dublin, Glasgow and two nights each in Manchester and Brighton, and finishes with two shows at London's Olympia on 4 and 5 December. Mailing-list pre-sale opens at 9am GMT on 5 November, general sale at 9am GMT on 7 November through Ticketmaster. No support act below the two headliners has been announced.

The set as it currently stands

The in-store shows give the clearest picture of how the new songs are being played. At Rough Trade Bristol on 14 September the matinee ran to ten songs: 'Clark Kent', 'Coming On Strong', 'Mercury', 'Worst Birthday Ever', 'I Still Remember', 'Not Your Problem', 'Traps', 'Blue Light', 'Moving On' and 'This Modern Love' — roughly a third new material, the rest spread across the catalogue rather than weighted to the debut.

The Banquet Records show at Circuit in Kingston on 10 September went further. The band opened with three from the album in narrative order, '22.01.22', 'Coming On Strong' and 'Love Bombs', worked in 'Clark Kent', 'Now We Can't Be Friends', 'Blue' and 'Pigwig' alongside 'Mercury', 'Banquet' and 'I Still Remember', covered t.A.T.u.'s 'All the Things She Said' and closed the encore with 'Helicopter'. Okereke, now 44, worked a loop pedal through the new songs and told the sold-out room: “Thank you for being so kind to us, I know you probably don't know any of these songs but it's nice to feel your energy.”

Two things carry over from the larger shows. The arrangement still rests on the two-Telecaster interplay between Okereke and Lissack, with Bartle and Deacon holding a harder, less fidgety bottom end than the original line-up had. And the crowd is no longer one generation: the Crystal Palace review described thirtysomethings in old merchandise standing next to people who arrived via a film soundtrack.