I hit the Madison Theater for the second time in four days this past Wednesday, this time to see Bloc Party. Smoosh was the opening act, and the way I figure it, a bunch of adults listening to some preteens play music is something you'll probably see once or twice in your life outside of recitals, so hey, why not? I guess it's a good thing I decided to get there in time to see them, because I forgot my fucking ticket. Did they have computers on site, with which they could look up my Ticketmaster purchase? They did not know who "computer" was. So I raced home, and raced back, and gave them my ticket, and I walked in the door, and as soon as I had found a place to stand, Bloc Party came on stage. I was literally there less than sixty seconds - probably less than thirty - before Bloc Party came out. Fucking cutting it close, yo.

In any case, they kicked off with Song For Clay (Disappear), probably one of my favorites off of Weekend in the City. The drums were crystal clear, the bass was definitely there, and the vocals were, for a change, quite audible. I really could have used more of both guitars, though. Regardless, the song rocked pretty hard, and the sizable crowd was pretty into it. They played virtually all of my favorites, and some of my less-favorites, though notably absent was I Still Remember, which I think is one of their best, and even has a video. Maybe they get sick of playing it all the time?

Perhaps the most striking thing about the show was their guitar player. First, he's about the skinniest musician this side of Sigur Ros. Second, all those weird sounds and odd guitar solos? He plays those all live. I remember hearing about how Weekend in the City was all over-produced, with tons of post-processing effects and whatnot. That is funny, because it is absolutely not true. The only pre-recorded sounds they used were the TV-static at the beginning of Hunting For Witches and the vocal stuff at the start of The Prayer. That noise at 1:27 in Where is Home?. He actually does that live. That bizarre solo near the end of Hunting For Witches? Same. Ditto for all the weird glitchy, stuttery, and generally noisy sounds you might hear throughout their work, in fact. Pretty impressive, really.

The band played a couple encores, with their singer roaming out into the crowd while singing for one of them. They performed quite a bit of material - probably about an hour and half's worth. I left feeling pretty good about the whole thing. It's tough to evaluate them fairly coming off of seeing The National live, but I'd say Bloc Party was really a pretty decent show.