Bloc Party

In recent years a trend has been emerging within the music industry, the single album live performance. During this style of show bands or artists will perform one of their seminal records in its entirety rather than a typical set comprising of a selection of songs from throughout their catalogue. The latest act to bring such a show to Australian shores is the UK’s Bloc Party, with their 2005 record Silent Alarm.

City Hub spoke with Bloc Party’s Russel Lissack about the motivations behind touring in this way.

“It wasn’t my idea but it was something I was certainly open to doing because I’d seen a lot of my favourite bands doing it. So when it was suggested to us I was quite excited but the prospect,” Lissack said. “Silent Alarm has a special place in a lot of people’s hearts so they’re excited to see it and we’re excited to be performing it in that way.”

Formulating a tour in this way was also fortuitous for Bloc Party as the band has been rather quiet over the last few years, in part due to lineup changes and also due to individual members having solo projects to work on.

“This felt like a nice way to reintroduce the band almost because we haven’t done a lot recently,” explained Lissack.

This reintroduction will hopefully be the beginning of a new wave of music and shows form the group according to Lissack, “Writing has always been something we’ve done on tour, so we did a little in Europe during the recent tour and will probably do the same in Australia… it’s still early days so it’s difficult to put a date on anything but hopefully in the not too distant future there will be new material.”

Obviously with a new line-up these shows will be different to the last time the band was here in Australia, but for Lissack the biggest different between now and the last time they played many of the songs from Silent Alarm live is their on stage presence.

“There is still that nervous energy that you get from performing but everyone is a much more experienced musician and much more confident and comfortable in their roles now.”

Whilst the tour is predominantly shaped around the single record Lissack was quick to reassure fans that they would also be pulling out some of their other major hits from the catalogue. The major draw for the shows though is the opportunity to hear Silent Alarm in full.

“If this was an album that you heard and liked then this is the chance to see it, there are a lot of songs from that record which we haven’t played for 13 years and they probably won’t come out again so this is probably your only chance to hear them.”

Nov 29-30. Hordern Pavilion, 1 Driver Ave, Moore Park. $99.50+b.f Tickets & Info: www.playbillvenues.com.au