Good Weather For Airstrikes

To the top of the charts then, shall we? It’s hard to imagine this going anywhere else, as “I Still Remember” - while nowhere close the band’s best song (or even best single) - is far and away Bloc Party’s most chart-friendly product to date. A tale of the unspoken sexual tension between young heterosexual boys disguised as an anthem for young people wrought with nostalgia for lost love and missed opportunities, the track lives and dies on a monumental riff that stands out as the single most commercially viable thing Bloc have created to this point in their career. Sure, it could be construed as a bit vanilla and overly melodramatic - hell, you wouldn’t be too far off if you described it as a more energetic Snow Patrol track - but it’s easily the most universal track on A Weekend In The City and an obvious single choice. Good, but nothing terribly life changing.

But as is often the case with Bloc Party single releases (that weak-ass US-only release of “Helicopter” aside), the B-sides take it to a whole new plane of excellence. Of all the great B-sides that surfaced when AWITC was released in February, “Selfish Son” gets the call here, and it’s by far Jacknife Lee’s best work for the band to date. The biggest difference between Lee’s work for Snow Patrol and Bloc Party, I’ve found, is that Bloc’s tracks are still songs if you remove Lee from them and strip away his production work. But Lee might as well be Snow Patrol’s six member, as it’s fairly impossible to imagine a Snow Patrol track not drenched in the electronic flourishes that Lee brings to the table, and that’s pretty much the case on “Selfish Son”. Not that that’s a bad thing - I still regard Final Straw as not only one of the best produced albums I’ve ever heard, but one of my favorites as well. “Selfish Son” is all electronic drumbeats, rumbling, ominous synths and twinkling production flourishes, over which Kele delivers dark lyrics in another excellent vocal performance, and it’s easily in the top three AWITC B-sides to surface so far.

Elsewhere, the remixes are also impossibly good. First up, we’ve got SebastiAn’s rework which is just all kinds of ridiculous. It’s hard to even know where to begin, but one thing’s for sure - SebastiAn has just established himself as the force to be reckoned with in the remixing game; he’s operating on a whole new level right now. I mean, just look at this remix. “I Still Remember” is arguably the safest and most vanilla track on A Weekend In The City and SebastiAn turns it into an absolute MONSTER, drawing you in gently with some seductive spiraling synths before dropping the motherfucking beat at the 0:50 mark, like Zeus himself raining thunder and lightning down on the unsuspecting masses below. Things carry on like this the rest of the way out, as Kele’s “I should have kissed you!” yelps, punctuated by SebastiAn’s massive, bass-heavy synth surges, recall all the desperate urgency of Silent Alarm that’s sadly absent on the new record. SebastiAn, I bow before you.

There are a few other mixes on the release that follow the SebastiAn root and reinvent the track as a club-eligible dance edit, but Lull’s aptly-title “Music Box & Tears” mix outdoes them all by going the opposite direction, slowing things down and turning the melodrama up to 11. Heavy on strings, twinkly sounds and cinematic melodrama, Lull does for “I Still Remember” what Engineers did for “Blue Light” back on 2005’s Silent Alarm: Remixed - that is, he removes any semblance of guitars or percussion, shuns even the slightest notion of Rock ‘n Roll and puts the track in ethereal mode and goes full speed ahead. Kele’s original lyrical template remains completely intact as synthetic strings wash across the mix in undeniably epic fashion and twinkling keys tug at your heartstrings like their name was Audrey Hepburn. So yeah, it’s quite excellent, and just might be the best non-dance remix of a Bloc Party track since Engineers’ aforementioned masterpiece made our Top 10 Songs of 2005 two years ago. All in all, the single release of “I Still Remember” is the complete package, and even if the track itself doesn’t quite warrant the 8 out of 10 I’ve given it below, the brilliance of the B-sides cannot be denied as I’m once again reminded just how good it is to be a Bloc Party fan.

MP3s:
“I Still Remember” - Bloc Party
“Selfish Son” - Bloc Party
“I Still Remember” (SebastiAn Remix) - Bloc Party ((highly recommended))
“I Still Remember” (Music Box & Tears Mix) - Bloc Party ((highly recommended))

I’m also trying to work music video content into as many of my single reviews as possible now, as I’ve recently begun to receive monthly DVD’s of each month’s top music videos, so I can now offer videos in higher quality than you can find them anywhere else on the internet. The “I Still Remember” video has been circulating for a while now, but only as a fairly low-quality MTV Online rip, so I’m here rectify the situation and offer it in beautiful hi-res for all you perfectionists out there. The video itself capitalizes on a brilliant treatment and concept for the most part, but falters thanks to a rather cringe-worthy acting performance by one Mr. Kele Okereke. The whole thing’s quite pretty and certainly puts the large budget to good use, but I’ve much preferred Bloc Party’s past videos. That said, this is the perfect treatment for a band trying to make it big in the US, as it manages to get the band as much face time as possible through performance footage and emotive close-ups while still providing an interesting plotline and concept to keep viewers entertained.

Video: “I Still Remember”
Artist: Bloc Party
Director: Aggressive
Watch: [YouTube]
Download: [Quicktime • 50 MB]

In the spirit of heightened music video appreciation, I highly suggest (nay, I demand) that y’alls check out Obtusity sooner rather than later. If long-winded (in a good way), hyper-academic analysis and all-over-it music video coverage are your thing, then Obtusity is your new homepage. Get on it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Single Review, Music Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.