Weekend in the City is Bloc Party's sophomore album, that dreaded release that either makes a band or sends them sinking into obscurity. I liked (didn't love), Silent Alarm, and the same is true of Weekend in the City. That said, I think Weekend in the City is actually a better album.

There were always a handful of tracks on the first disc that just didn't do it for me. They weren't bad enough to skip most of the time, but I wasn't terribly fond of The Price of Gas or Positive Tension. Weekend in the City suffers no such problems. The album is pretty solid throughout; only The Prayer comes close to being filler quality material. The consistency is a nice improvement from Silent Alarm.

I do think Weekend has a few flaws, however. The first is that the album is pretty consistent in quality on both sides of the ol' Y-axis. There aren't any tracks that are terribly mediocre, but there aren't any that really stand out to me as being awesome, either. Silent Alarm had Helicopter and Banquet, the kind of songs you'd play for a friend to get them into the band. There's really nothing like that on Weekend in the City.

My other issue is that it's relatively similar to Silent Alarm. It's not the same - there's more synth work, and so on - but it's pretty close, in my estimation. It's not so like Silent Alarm that it detracts, but I can usually only stick with bands for two albums that are this close together. The third needs to diverge, or I lose interest.

Altogether, I'm pretty happy with Weekend in the City. If you're not familiar with Bloc Party, well, I'd still recommend Banquet and Helicopter as the two songs to introduce yourself to them with, but Weekend in the City might actually be the better album to start with.