{"id":771114,"date":"2026-09-15T05:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T05:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/771114\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T05:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T05:12:14","slug":"bloc-party-anatomy-of-a-brief-romance-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/771114\/","title":{"rendered":"Bloc Party: Anatomy of a Brief Romance Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Before Midnight, the final film in Richard Linkater\u2019s Before Sunrise trilogy, Julie Delpy\u2019s character poses a question to her husband, 20 years after the two fell in love in Vienna: \u201cIf we were meeting for the first time today on a train, would you find me attractive?\u201d It\u2019s the kind of existential head-scratcher that makes romance, and its end, infinitely fertile artistic ground. Twenty years and change since many of us fell in love with Bloc Party<\/a>, the arrival of a new album might have you asking a similar question: If we first encountered them as they are today, would we still fall in love with them? In Linklater\u2019s film, it\u2019s a bittersweet paradox. In this case, it\u2019s a no-brainer: almost certainly not. Even for the Bloc Party faithful, Anatomy of a Brief Romance, framed as the document of a relationship\u2019s dissolution, might prove to be a breakup album in more ways than one.<\/p>\n

Anatomy of a Brief Romance is Bloc Party\u2019s second breakup album, after 2008\u2019s Intimacy<\/a>. But this one is more direct, giving us a chronological, blow-by-blow account of an ill-fated couple, one half of which is singer and frontman Kele Okereke<\/a>. We start with a song named after the day they first locked eyes, \u201cbetween reps\u201d at the gym (\u201c22.01.22\u201d). We follow them through the dizzying honeymoon period (\u201cComing On Strong,\u201d \u201cLove Bombs\u201d). We\u2019re there when things get ugly (\u201cWorst Birthday Ever\u201d), and when it all crashes and burns (\u201cNow We Can\u2019t Be Friends,\u201d \u201cMoving On,\u201d \u201cEulogy\u201d). Okereke\u2019s tale, we\u2019re told, is nothing but the truth. \u201cEvery lyric you’re hearing on this record was something that actually happened to me,\u201d he says in the press release. \u201cI had to tell the story, from start to finish.\u201d<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

What horrors did he endure to inspire this courageous tell-all account? How will his trials and tribulations lend clarity to our own? And is there any chance that maybe, just maybe, after 20 years of hiatuses, lineup changes, and limp comebacks, this indie-rock soap-opera is the thing that finally gets Bloc Party back on track?<\/p>\n

It is not. Bloc Party, the once promising new kids on the block of UK indie rock, have fallen further and further with each record since Silent Alarm<\/a>, their 2005 debut and the only real reason we\u2019re still talking about them. Anatomy of a Brief Romance marks a new low, 14 cuts of deep-if-you\u2019re-14 lyrics describing a life experience that, while understandably a big deal for its narrator, is actually pretty unremarkable. You meet a guy at the gym, you date, it doesn\u2019t work out, he keeps watching your Instagram stories after you break up. Sally Rooney could probably make it work in a novel. Here, though, the story is so tritely told, so infinitely beneath artists of Bloc Party\u2019s capabilities, it seems remarkable no one stepped in and stopped it.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with those Instagram stories. We hear about them in a song that explores the different meanings contained in its title: \u201cStories.\u201d The chorus is a call and response: \u201cYou say you\u2019re going away, but you still keep watching\u2026 my stories.\u201d I mean, sure, who among us hasn\u2019t gotten a shameful kick out of seeing a certain someone in that \u201cseen by\u201d list? With a bit of a wink and dry wit, this could be a nice riff on the indignities of romance in the digital age. But there\u2019s no humor or self-awareness here, just a man in his 40s spilling the weakest tea imaginable. And there\u2019s more. Okereke runs with the motif, expanding into the most basic wordplay and metaphor. \u201cTurns out you\u2019re not the chapter I thought you\u2019d be,\u201d he pouts. \u201cMore like a footnote. In my… story.\u201d Burn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Before Midnight, the final film in Richard Linkater\u2019s Before Sunrise trilogy, Julie Delpy\u2019s character poses a question…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[375,96,128,56,54,55,307],"class_list":["post-771114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}